LIBEAEY 

©luo logical  ^emhumu 


PRINCETON.  N.  ■/, 


No.  Case, 
No.  Shelf, 
No.  Book, 


— !■;.». "7-...- 

The  John   M.   lirebs   Donation. 


SCO 

aw 


a' 


SERMONS 


HENRY    MELVILL,    B.  D. 

MINISTER    OP   CAMDEN    CHAPEL.    CAMBERWELL, 

AND 

LATE    FELLOW   AND    TUTOR    OP   ST.   PETER'S   COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE. 

COMPRrsrNG  ALL   THE   DISCOURSES   PUBLISHED   BY   CONSENT   OF    THE    AUTHOR, 


EDITED   BY 

THE   RIGHT   REV.   C.  P.  M'lLVAINE,   D.  D. 

BISHOP  OP   THE   PROTESTANT   EPISCOPAL   CHURCH   IN   THE    DIOCESE   OF    OHIO 


NEW-YORK : 

PUBLISHED    BY    SWORDS,    STANFORD,    &    CO. 

1838. 


/ 


Entered,  according  to  act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1838,  by  Swords, 
Stanford,  &  co.  in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  Southern  District  of  New- 
York. 


NEW-YORK: 
Printed  by  Daniel   F»n»h»w. 


■ v ...... 


Editor's  Preface, Page   3 

Sermon  [.—The  First  Prophecy, 11 

Sermon  II.— Christ  the  Minister  of  the  Church,         ....      34 

Sermon  III.— The  Impossibility  of  Creature  Merit,  56 

Sermon  IV. — The  Humiliation  of  the  Man  Christ  Jesus,  .        .      76 

Sermon  V. — The  Doctrine  of  the  Resurrection  viewed  in  connection 

with  that  of  the  Soul's  Immortality,        ...  98 

Sermon  VI. — The  Power  of  Wickedness  and  Righteousnes  to  repro- 
duce themselves, 118 

Sermon  VII. — The   Power  of   Religion   to    strengthen    the   Human 

Intellect, 138 

Sermon  VIII.— The  Provision  made  by  God  for  the  Poor,  .        .  162 

Sermon  IX.— St.  Paul  a  Tent-maker, 183 

Sermon  X.— The  Advantages  of  a  state  of  Expectation,     .        .        .  203 

Sermon  XI.— Truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus 226 

Sermon  XII.— The  Difficulties  of  Scripturei 248 


Sermons  pr cached  before  the   University  of  Cambridge, 
February,  1836. 

Sermon  I — The  Greatness  and  Condescension  of  God,  .         .        278 

Sermon  II.— The  Termination  of  the  Mediatorial  Kingdom,     .        .291 

Sermon  III. — The  Advantages  resulting  from  the  Possession  of  the 

Scriptures, 307 

Skrmon  IV. — Neglect  of  the  Gospel  followed  by  its  Removal,  323 


IV  CONTENTS. 

Sermons  preached  before  //if    University  oj   Cambridge, 
February,   1837. 

Sermon  I. — The  Unnaturalness  of  Disobedience  to  the  Gospel,    Page  ,341 

Sermon  II — Songs  in  the  Night, 356 

Sermon  III. — Testimony  confirmed  by  Experience,         .         .         .         370 

Sermon  IV. — The  General  Resurrection  and  Judgment,     .         .        .     385 

Sermon. — The  Anchor  of  the  Soul.  Preached  at  Trinity  Church, 
<  'helsea,  July,  1836,  in  behalf  oi"  the  Episcopal  Floating 
Chapel, .         401 

Spitai,  Sermon. — Preached  before  the  Lord  Mayor,   &c.   in  Christ 

Church,  Newgate-street,  April,  1831,      ....    417 

Sermon — The  Divine  Patience  exhausted  through  the  making  void 

the  Law, .441 

Sermon. — The  Strength  which  Faith  gains  by  Experience,        .        .    465 


Sermons  preached  in  Great  St.  Mary's  Church,  Cambridge,  at 
the  Evening  Lecture  in  February,  1836  and  1837. 

Sermon  (1836.) — The  Greatness  of  Salvation   an    Argument  for  the 

Peril  of  its  Neglect, 489 

Sermon.—     "        On  the  Effects  of  Consideration,        ....     506 

Sermon  (1837.)— The  Two  Sons, 5-28 

Sehmon. —  ••         The  Dispersion  and  Restoration  of  the  Jews,  .     547 


EDITOR'S     PREFACE 


The  author  of  these  discourses  is  well  known  in  England  as  an 
eloquent  and  earnest  preacher  of  the  Gospel.  "Envy  itself,"  says 
the  British  Critic,  "  must  acknowledge  his  great  abilities  and  great 
eloquence."  After  having  occupied  the  highest  standing,  while  an 
under-graduate  of  the  University  of  Cambridge,  he  was  chosen  to  a 
Fellowship  in  St.  Peter's  College,  and,  for  some  time,  was  a  tutor 
in  that  Society.  Thence  he  was  called  to  the  pastoral  charge  of 
Camden  Chapel,  (a  proprietary  chapel,)  in  the  overgrown  parish  of 
Camberwell,  one  of  the  populous  suburbs  of  London.  The  first 
twelve  discourses  in  this  volume  were  preached  in  that  pulpit,  and 
the  rest,  while  he  was  connected  therewith.  It  has  not  unfrequently 
been  the  privilege  of  the  Editor  to  worship  and  listen,  in  company 
with  the  highly  interesting  and  intelligent  congregation  that  crowds 
the  pews  and  aisles,  and  every  corner  of  a  standing-place  in  that 
edifice ;  fully  participating  in  that  entire  and  delightful  captivity  of 
mind  in  which  their  beloved  pastor  is  wont  to  lead  the  whole  mass 
of  his  numerous  auditory. 

Melvill  is  not  yet  what  is  usually  called  a  middle-aged  man.  His 
constitution  and  physical  powers  are  feeble.  His  lungs  and  chest 
needing  constant  care  and  protection,  often  seem  determined  to  sub- 
mit no  longer  to  the  efforts  they  are  required  to  make  in  keeping 
pace  with  his  high-wrought  and  intense  animation.  The  hearer 
sometimes  listens  with  pain,  lest  an  instrument  so  frail,  and  struck 
by  a  spirit  so  nerved  with  the  excitement  of  the  most  inspiring 
themes,  should  suddenly  break  some  silver  cord,  and  put  to  silence  a 
harper  whose  notes  of  thunder,  and  strains  of  warning,  invitation, 
and  tenderness,  the  church  is  not  prepared  to  lose.  Generally,  how- 
ever, one  thinks  but  little  of  the  speaker  while  hearing  Melvill.  The 
manifest  defects  of  a  very  peculiar  delivery,  both  as  regards  its  ac- 
tion and  intonation;  (if  that  may  be  called  action  which  is  the  mere 
quivering  and  jerking  of  a  body  too  intensely  excited  to  be  quiet  a 
moment) — the  evident  feebleness  and  exhaustion  of  a  frame  charged 
to  the  brim  with  an  earnestness  which  seems  laboring  to  find  a 
tongue  in  every  limb,  while  it  keeps  in  strain  and  rapid  action  every 
muscle  and  fibre,  are  forgotten,  after  a  little  progress  of  the  discourse, 
in  the  rapid"  and  swelling  current  of  thought  in  which  the  hearer  is 
carried  along,  wholly  engrossed  with  the  new  aspects,  the  rich  and 


4  EDITOR  S    PREFACE. 

glowing  scenery,  the  bold  prominences  and  beautiful  landscapes  of 
truth,  remarkable  both  for  variety  and  unity,  with  which  every  turn 
of  the  stream  delights  him.  But  then  one  must  make  haste,  if  he 
would  see  all.  Melvill  delivers  his  discourses  as  a  war-horse  rushes 
to  the  charge.  He  literally  runs,  till,  for  want  of  breath  he  can  do 
so  no  longer.  His  involuntary  pauses  are  as  convenient  to  his  au- 
dience as  essential  to  himself.  Then  it  is,  that  an  equally  breathless 
audience,  betraying  the  most  convincing  signs  of  having  forgotten  to 
breathe,  commence  their  preparation  for  the  next  outset  with  a  de- 
gree of  unanimity  and  of  business-like  effort  of  adjustment,  which 
can  hardly  fail  of  disturbing,  a  little,  a  stranger's  gravity. 

There  is  a  peculiarity  in  the  composition  of  Melvill's  congrega- 
tion which  contributes  much  to  give  peculiarity  to  his  discourses. 
His  chapel  is  a  centre  to  which  hearers  Hock,  drawn  by  the  reputa- 
tion of  the  preacher,  not  only  from  all  the  neighborhood,  but  from 
divers  parts  of  the  great,  metropolis,  bringing  under  his  reach,  not 
only  the  highest  intellectual  character,  but  all  varieties  of  states  of 
mind  ;  from  that  of  the  devout  believer,  to  that  of  the  habitual  doubter, 
or  confirmed  infidel.  In  this  mixed  multitude,  young  men,  of  great 
importance,  occupy  a  large  place.  Seed  sown  in  that  congregation 
is  seen  scattered  over  all  London,  and  carried  into  all  England. 
Hence  there  is  an  evident  effort  on  the  part  of  the  preacher  to  intro- 
duce as  much  variety  of  topic  and  of  treatment  as  is  consistent  with 
the  great  duty  of  always  preaching  and  teaching  Jesus  Christ;  of 
always  holding  up  the  cross,  with  all  its  connected  truths  surround- 
ing it,  as  the  one  great  and  all-pervading  subject  of  his  ministry.  To 
these  circumstances  he  alludes  in  a  passage  towards  the  end  of  the 
sermon  on  the  Difficulties  of  Scripture,  a  sermon  we  would  particu- 
larly recommend  to  the  reader — and  a  passage,  introductory  to  one  of 
the  most  eloquent  and  impressive  parts  of  the  whole  volume.  "  We 
feel  (he  says)  that  we  have  a  difficult  part  to  perform  in  ministering 
to  the  congregation  which  assembles  within  these  walls.  Gather- 
ed as  it  is  from  many  parts,  and  without  question  including,  often- 
times, numbers  who  make  no  profession,  whatsoever,  of  religion, 
we  think  it  bound  on  us  to  seek  out  great  variety  of  subjects,  so  that, 
if  possible,  the  case  of  none  of  the  audience  may  be  quite  overlooked 
in  a  series  of  discourses."  We  know  not  the  preacher  who  succeeds 
better  in  this  respect ;  who  causes  to  pass  before  his  people  a  richer, 
or  more  complete  array  of  doctrinal  and  practical  truth ;  exhibits  it 
in  a  greater  variety  of  lights  ;  surrounds  it  with  a  scenery  of  more 
appropriate  and  striking  illustration ;  meets  more  of  the  influential 
difficulties  of  young  and  active  minds  ;  grapples  with  more  of  the 
real  enmity  of  scepticism,  and  for  all  classes  of  his  congrigation  more 
diligently  "  seeks  out  acceptable  words,"  or  brings  more  seasonably- 


EDITORS    PREFACE.  O 

out  oflns  treasures,  things  new  and  old,  and  yet  without  tailing  to 
keep  within  the  circle  of  always  preaching  Christ— teaching  not  only 
the  truth,  but  "  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus,"  without  obscurity,  with- 
out compromise,  and  without  fear  ;  pointedly,  fully,  habitually. 

It  is  on  account  of  this  eminent  union  of  variety  and  faithfulness, 
this  wide  compass  of  excursion  without  ever  losing  sight  of  the 
cross  as  the  central  light  and  power  in  which  every  thing  in  religion 
lives,  and  moves,  and  has  its  being ;  it  is  because  that  same  variety 
of  minds  which  throng  the  seats  and  standing-places  of  Camden 
chapel,  and  hang  with  delight  upon  the  lips  of  the  preacher,  finding 
in  his  teaching  what  rivets  their  attention,  rebukes  their  worldliness, 
shames  their  doubts,  annihilates  their  difficulties,  and  enlarges  their 
views  of  the  great  and  precious  things  of  the  Gospel,  are  found  every 
where  in  this  land,  especially  among  our  educated  young  men,  that 
we  have  supposed  the  publicatiou  of  these  discourses  might  receive 
the  Divine  blessing,  and  be  productive  of  very  important  benefits. 

It  can  hardly  be  necessary  to  say,  that  in  causing  a  volume  to  is- 
sue from  the  press,  as  this  does,  one  does  not  make  himself  respon- 
sible for  every  jot  and  tittle  of  what  it  contains.  It  may  be  calculated 
powerfully  to  arrest  attention,  disarm  prejudice,  conciliate  respect, 
stimulate  inquiry,  impress  most  vital  truth  ;  and  in  many  ways  effect 
a  great  deal  for  good,  though  we  be  not  prepared  to  concur  with  its 
author  in  some  minor  thoughts  or  incidental  ideas  on  which  none  of 
the  great  matters  in  his  volume  depend. 

There  are  some  aspects  in  which  these  discourses  may  be  profitably 
studied  by  candidates  for  orders,  and  indeed  by  most  preachers,  exclu- 
sive of  the  substantial  instruction  of  their  contents.  We  do  not  refer  to 
their  style.  This  we  cannot  recommend  for  imitation.  However  we 
may  like  it  in  Melvill,  because  it  is  emphatically  his,  the  mode  of  his 
mind ;  the  gait  in  which  his  thoughts  most  naturally  march  on  their 
high  places  ;  the  raiment  in  which  his  inner  man  invests  itself, 
without  effort,  and  almost  of  necessity,  when  he  takes  the  place  of 
ambassador  of  the  King  of  kings,  we  might  not  like  it  any  where 
else.  However  this  peculiar  turn  and  swell  of  expression  may  be 
adapted  to  that  peculiar  breadth,  and  height,  and  brilliancy  of  con- 
ception for  which  this  author  is  often  distinguished;  with  all  those 
other  attributes  which  adapt  his  discourses  to  opportunities  of  useful- 
ness not  often  improved  ;  and  a  class  of  readers  not  often  attracted, 
by  the  preacher  ;  we  should  think  it  a  great  evil  if  our  candidates  for 
orders  should  attempt  to  appear  in  such  flowing  robes.  For  the  same 
reason  that  they  sit  well  on  him,  would  they  sit  awkwardly  on  them. 
They  are  his,  and  not  theirs.  His  mind  was  measured  for  such  a 
dress.  Nature  made  it  up  and  adapted  it  to  his  style  of  thought,  in- 
sensible to  himself.     The  diligent  husbandman  may  be  as  useful  in 


b  LDHORS    PREFACE. 

his  way,  as  the  prince  in  his.  But  the  husbandman  in  the  equipment 
of  the  prince  Avould  be  sadly  out  of  keeping.  Not  more  than  if  a 
mind  of  the  usual  turn  and  character  of  thought  should  emulate  the 
stride  and  the  swing,  the  train  and  the  plumage  of  Melvill. 

It  is  in  the  expository  character  of  this  author's  discourses,  that 
we  would  present  them  for  imitation.  Of  the  expositions  themselves) 
we  are  not  speaking ;  but  of  the  conspicuous  fact  that  whatever 
Scripture  he  selects,  his  sermon  is  made  up  of  its  elements.  His 
text  does  not  merely  introduce  his  subject,  but  suggests  and  contains 
it ;  and  not  only  contains,  but  is  identical  with  it.  His  aim  is  con- 
fined to  the  single  object  of  setting  forth  plainly  and  instructively 
some  one  or  two  great  features  of  scriptural  truth,  of  which  the  cho- 
sen passage  is  a  distinct  declaration.  No  matter  what  the  topic,  the 
hearer  is  sure  of  an  interesting  and  prominent  setting  out  of  the  text 
in  its  connection,  and  that  it  will  exercise  an  important  bearing  upon 
every  branch  of  the  discourse,  constantly  receiving  new  lights  and 
applications,  and  not  finally  relinquished  till  the  sermon  is  ended, 
and  the  hearer  has  obtained  an  inception  of  that  one  passage  of  the 
Bible  upon  his  mind,  never  to  be  forgotten.  In  other  words,  Melvill 
is  strictly  a  preacher  upon  texts,  instead  of  subjects  ;  upon  truths,  as 
expressed  and  connected  in  the  Bible,  instead  of  topics,  as  insulated 
or  classified,  according  to  the  ways  of  man's  wisdom.  This  is  pre- 
cisely as  it  should  be.  The  preacher  is  not  called  to  deliver  disser- 
tations upon  questions  of  theology,  or  orations  upon  specific  themes 
of  duty  and  spiritual  interest,  but  expositions  of  divine  truth  as  that 
is  presented  in  the  infinitely  diversified  combinations,  and  incidental 
allocations  of  the  Scriptures.  His  work  is  simply  that  of  making, 
through  the  blessing  of  God,  the  Holy  Scriptures  "  profitable  for 
doctrine,  reproof,  correction,  and  instruction  in  righteousness." 
This  he  is  to  seek  by  endeavoring  "  rightly  to  divide  the  word  of 
truth."  Too  much,  by  far,  has  the  preaching  of  these  days  departed 
from  this  expository  character.  The  praise  of  invention  is  too  much 
coveted.  The  simplicity  of  interpretation  and  application  is  too 
much  undervalued.  We  must  be  content  to  take  the  bread  as  the 
Lord  has  created  it,  and  perform  the  humble  office  of  distribution, 
going  round  amidst  the  multitude,  and  giving  to  all  as  each  may 
need,  believing  that  he  who  provided  it  will  see  that  there  be  enough 
and  to  spare,  instead  of  desiring  to  stand  in  the  place  of  the  Master, 
and  improve  by  our  wisdom  the  simple  elements,  "the  Jive  barley 
loaves  "  which  he  alone  can  make  sufficient  "  among  so  many." 

But  apart  from  the  duty  of  preaching  upon  and  out  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, instead  of  merely  taking  a  verse  as  the  starting-place  of  our 
train  of  remark  ;  apart  from  the  obligation  of  so  expounding  the  word 
of  God,  that  the  sermon  shall  take  its  shape  and  character  from  the 


EDITOR  S    PREFACE.  7 

text;  and  the  doctrine  and  the  duty  shall  be  taught  and  urged  ac- 
cording to  the  relative  bearings  and  proportions  in  which  they  are 
presented  therein  ;  this  textual  plan  of  constructing  discourses  is  the 
only  one  by  which  a  preacher  can  secure  a  due  variety  in  his  min- 
istry, except  he  go  outside  the  limits  of  always  preaching  Christ 
crucified,  and  deal  with  other  matters  than  such  as  bear  an  import- 
ant relation  to  the  person,  office,  and  benefits  of  "  the  Lord  our 
Righteousness."  He  who  preaches  upon  subjects  in  divinity,  in- 
stead of  passages  of  Scripture,  fitting  a  text  to  his  theme,  instead  of 
extracting  his  theme  from  his  text,  will  soon  find  that,  in  the  ordi- 
nary frequency  of  parochial  ministrations,  he  has  gone  the  round, 
and  traced  all  the  great  highways  of  his  field,  and  what  to  do  next, 
without  repeating  his  course,  or  changing  his  whole  mode  of  pro- 
ceeding, he  will  be  at  a  great  loss  to  discover.  Distinct  objects  in 
the  preacher's  message,  like  the  letters  in  his  alphabet,  are  few — few 
when  it  is  considered  that  his  life  is  to  be  occupied  in  exhibiting 
them.  But  their  combinations,  like  those  of  the  letters  of  the  alpha- 
bet, are  innumerable.  Few  are  the  distinct  classes  of  objects  which 
make  up  the  beautiful  landscapes  under  the  light  and  shadows  of  a 
summer's  day.  The  naturalist,  who  describes  by  generaand  species, 
may  soon  enumerate  them.  But  boundless  is  the  variety  of  aspects 
in  which  they  appear  under  all  their  diversities  of  shape,  color,  rela- 
tion, magnitude,  as  the  observer  changes  place,  and  sun  and  cloud 
change  the  light.  The  painter  must  paint  for  ever  to  exhibit  all. 
So  as  to  the  great  truths  to  which  the  preacher  must  give  himself  for 
life.  Their  variety  of  combinations,  as  exhibited  in  the  Bible,  is  end- 
less. He  who  treats  them  with  strict  reference  to  all  the  diversities 
of  shape,  proportion,  incident,  relation,  circumstance,  under  which 
the  pen  of  inspiration  has  left  them,  changing  his  point  of  observa- 
tion with  the  changing  positions  and  wants  of  his  hearers,  allowing 
the  lights  and  shadows  of  Providence  to  lend  their  rightful  influence 
in  varying  the  aspect  and  applications  of  the  truth — such  a  preacher, 
if  his  heart  be  fully  in  his  work,  can  never  lack  variety,  so  far  as  it 
is  proper  for  one  who  is  to  "  know  nothing  among  men  but  Jesus 
Christ  and  him  crucified."  He  will  constantly  feel  as  if  he  had  only 
begun  the  work  given  him  to  do — furnished  only  a  few  specimens 
out  of  a  rich  and  inexhaustible  cabinet  of  gems.  By  strictly  adher- 
ing to  this  plan,  the  author  of  these  discourses  attains  unusual  va- 
riety in  his  ministry,  considering  that  he  makes  it  so  prominently 
his  business  to  teach  and  preach  Jesus  Christ. 

But  here  it  may  be  well  to  say  that  by  variety,  as  desirable  to  a 
certain  extent,  in  the  preacher's  work,  we  mean  nothing  like  origin- 
ality. Some  minds  cannot  help  a  certain  measure  of  originality. 
They  may  treat  of  old  themes,  and  with  ideas  essentially  the  same 


«  EDITOR  S    PREFACE. 

as  any  one  else  would  employ,  but  with  peculiarities  of  thought 
which  set  them  far  apart  from  all  other  minds.  But  to  seek  origin- 
ality, while  it  is  very  commonly  the  mistake  of  young  preachers,  is 
a  very  serious  error.  There  cannot  be  any  thing  new  in  the  preach- 
er's message.  He  that  seeks  novelties  will  be  sure  to  preach  fan- 
cies. "  The  real  difficulty  and  the  real  triumph  of  preaching  is  to 
enforce  home  upon  the  mind  and  conscience,  trite,  simple,  but  all- 
important  truths  ;  to  urge  old  topics  in  common  language,  and  to 
send  the  hearer  back  to  his  house  awakened,  humbled,  and  impressed  ; 
not  so  much  astonished  by  the  blaze  of  oratory,  but  thinking  far  more 
of  the  argument  than  of  the  preacher;  sensible  of  his  own  sins,  and 
anxious  to  grasp  the  proffered  means  of  salvation.  To  say  the  same 
things  which  the  best  and  most  pious  ministers  of  Christ's  church 
have  said  from  the  beginning  ;  to  tread  in  their  path,  to  follow  their 
footsteps,  and  yet  not  servilely  to  copy,  or  verbally  to  repeat  them  ; 
to  take  the  same  groundwork,  and  yet  add  to  it  an  enlarged  and  di- 
versified range  of  illustrations,  brought  up  as  it  were  to  the  age,  and 
adapted  to  time  and  circumstance;  this  is,  we  think,  the  true  origin- 
ality of  the  pulpit.  To  be  on  the  watch  to  strike  out  some  novel 
method  of  display, — to  dash  into  the  fanciful,  because  it  is  an  ar- 
duous task  to  arrest  the  same  eager  notice  by  the  familiar — this  is 
not  originality,  but  mannerism  or  singularity.  And  although  few 
can  be  original,  nothing  is  more  easy  than  to  be  singular." 

The  discourses  contained  in  this  volume  are  all  that  Melvill  has 
published  ;  unless  there  be  one,  or  two,  in  pamphlet  form,  of  which 
the  Editor  has  not  heard.  We  say  all  that  Melvill  has  published. 
Many  others  have  been  published  surreptitiously ,  which  he  never 
prepared  for  the  press,  and  which  ought  not  to  be  read  as  specimens 
of  his  preaching.  In  the  English  periodical,  called  "The  Pulpit," 
there  are  many  such  sermons,  under  the  name  of  Melvill.  In  justice 
to  that  distinguished  preacher,  and  to  all  others  whose  names  are  si- 
milarly used,  it  should  be  known  that  the  contents  of  that  work  are 
mere  stenographic  reports,  by  hired  agents  of  the  press,  who  go  to 
church  that  they  may  get  an  article  for  the  next  number  of  The  Pul- 
pit. While  the  rest^of  the  congregation  are  hearing  the  sermon  for 
spiritual,  they  are  hearing  it  for  pecuniary  profit.  We  see  no  differ- 
ence between  a  week-day  press,  furnished  thus  by  Sunday  writers, 
and  a  Sunday-press  furnished  by  week-day  writers.  "  The  Pulpit" 
is  in  this  way  as  much  a  desecrater  of  the  Sabbath  as  the  "  Sunday 
Morning  Post,"  or  "Herald."  But  this  is  not  the  point  at  present. 
We  are  looking  at  the  exceeding  injustice  done  to  the  preacher 
whose  sermons  are  reported.  It  may  be  that  he  is  delivering  a  very 
familiar,  perhaps  an  unwritten  discourse  ;  special  circumstances  have 
prevented  his  devoting  the  usual  time  or  mind  to  the  preparation,  or 


EDITOR  S    PREFACE*.  9 

have  interfered  with  his  getting  up  the  usual  energy  of  thought  for 
the  work.  He  does  not  dream  of  the  public  press.  The  sermon  may 
be  useful  for  his  people,  but  just  the  one  which  he  Avould  dislike  to 
send  out  before  the  world.  Nevertheless,  the  reporter  for  The  Pul- 
pit has  happened  to  choose  his  church,  that  morning,  "for  better, 
for  worse,''''  and  he  cannot  lose  his  time.  The  tale  of  bricks  must  be 
rendered  to  the  taskmaster.  The  press  waits  for  its  article,  and  the 
stenographer  wants  his  wages,  and  favorable  or  unfavorable,  the  re- 
port must  be  printed.  Like  all  such  productions,  it  is  of  course  often 
careless  and  inaccurate;  sometimes  provokingly  and  very  inju- 
riously inaccurate.  The  attention  of  the  scribe  happened  to  be 
diverted  at  a  place  of  main  importance;  he  lost  the  explanatory  re- 
mark, the  qualifying  words,  the  connecting  link — his  report  is  thus 
untrue  :  either  he  leaves  the  hiatus,  occasioned  by  his  negligence, 
unsupplied,  or,  what  is  often  the  case,  daubs  it  up  with  his  own 
mortar,  puts  many  sentences  into  the  preacher's  mouth  of  his  own 
taste  and  divinity — thus  is  the  precious  specimen  composed,  and  that 
week  is  advertised,  to  the  great  mortification  of  the  alleged  author, 
an  original  sermon  in  the  last  number  of  the  Pulpit,  by  the  Rev. 
Henry  Melvill,  $c.  Such  is  the  history  of  almost  every  sermon 
which  has  as  yet  been  read  in  this  country  as  belonging  to  that  au- 
thor; the  Pulpit,  or  extracts  from  it  having  circulated  widely,  while 
the  real  sermons  of  Melvill,  having  been,  prior  to  this,  confined  to 
volumes  of  English  edition,  are  scarcely  known  among  us.  No  one 
can  help  seeing  how  injurious  such  surreptitious  publications  must 
be  to  the  preacher ;  what  a  nuisance  to  the  body  whom  they  profess 
to  represent.  So  is  the  magazine  of  which  we  have  been  speaking, 
regarded  in  England.  Not  unfrequently  ministers  have  been  obliged 
to  print  their  discourses  for  the  purpose  of  correcting  the  errors  of  its 
reporters.  More  than  once  its  Editor  has  been  prosecuted  for  the 
purpose  (though  in  vain)  of  stopping  this  exceedingly  objectionable 
mode  of  sustaining  "The  Pulpit." 

The  editor  of  this  volume  has  thought  it  expedient  to  make  these 
remarks  by  way  of  explanation  of  his  having  excluded  all  the  dis- 
courses ascribed  to  Melvill  contained  in  The  Pulpit.  If  there  be 
any  discourses  under  the  same  name,  in  the  other  periodical  of  the 
same  character,  called  the  British  Preacher,  they  are  subject  to  the 
same  condemnation. 

It  is  no  little  evidence  of  the  value  of  these  sermons,  in  this  vo- 
lume, which  were  preached  before  the  University  of  Cambridge,  that 
their  publication  was  in  consequence  of  a  request  "  from  the  resident 
Bachelors  and  Under-graduates,  headed  by  the  most  distinguished 
names,  and  numerously  signed."  A  strong  attestation  has  also  been 
given  not  only  to  the  University  sermons,  but  to  those  preached  in 
2 


10  EDITORS    PREFACE.. 

the  author's  Chapel,  in  Camberwell,  in  the  fact  that,  flooded  as  is  the 
market  with  the  immense  variety  of  pulpit  composition,  which  the 
London  press  continually  pours  in,  so  that  a  bookseller  can  scarcely 
be  persuaded  to  publish  a  volume  of  sermons  at  his  own  risk,  and 
such  a  volume  seldom  reaches  beyond  a  single  edition,  these  of 
Melvill  have,  in  a  short  time,  attained  their  third,  and  do  not  cease 
to  attract  much  attention.  The  British  Critic,  though  criticising 
with  some  justice  and  more  severity  some  peculiarities  of  our  author, 
speaks  of  the  Cambridge  sermons  as  possessing  many  specimens  of 
great  power  of  thought,  and  extraordinary  felicity  and  brilliancy  of 
diction."  "  Heartily  "  does  the  Reviewer  "admire  the  breathing 
words,  the  bold  figures,  the  picturesque  images,  the  forcible  reason- 
ings, the  rapid,  vivid,  fervid  perorations." 

In  conclusion  of  this  Preface,  the  Editor  adds  the  earnest  hope  that 
the  author  of  these  discourses  may  receive  wages,  as  well  in  this 
country  as  his  own — wages  such  as  best  pay  the  devoted  minister  of 
Christ;  that  he  may  reap  where  he  did  not  think  of  sowing,  and  ga- 
ther where  he  did  not  expect  to  strew,  to  the  praise  of  the  glory  of 
our  blessed  Lord,  and  only  Savior,  Jesus  Christ. 

C.  P.  M. 

Gambier,  Ohio,  July  1,  1838. 


^^pROPERTT^ 


f  ?zixc%mx  X 


SERMOW. 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY. 


"  And  I  will  put  enmity  between  thee  and  the  woman,  and  between  thy 
seed  and  her  seed:  it  shall  bruise  thy  head,  and  thou  shalt  bruise  his 
heel." — Genesis,  3  :  15. 

Such  is  the  first  prophecy  which  occurs  in  Scripture. 
Adam  and  Eve  had  transgressed  the  simple  command  of 
their  Maker ;  they  had  hearkened  to  the  suggestions  of  the 
tempter,  and  eaten  of  the  forbidden  fruit.  Summoned  into 
the  presence  of  God,  each  of  the  three  parties  is  successive- 
ly addressed ;  but  the  serpent,  as  having  originated  evil,  re- 
ceives first  his  sentence. 

We  have,  of  course,  no  power  of  ascertaining  the  external 
change  which  the  curse  brought  upon  the  serpent.  The 
terms,  however,  of  the  sentence,  "  upon  thy  belly  shalt  thou 
go,  and  dust  shalt  thou  eat  all  the  days  of  thy  life,"*  seem  to 
imply  that  the  serpent  had  not  been  created  a  reptile,  but  be- 
came classed  with  creeping  things,  as  a  consequence  of  the 
curse.  It  is  probable  that  heretofore  the  serpent  had  been  re- 
markable for  beauty  and  splendor,  and  that  on  this  account 
the  tempter  chose  it  as  the  vehicle  of  his  approaches.  Eve, 
in  all  likelihood,  was  attracted  towards  the  creature  by  its 
loveliness  :  and  when  she  found  it  endowed,  like  herself,  with 
the  power  of  speech,  she  possibly  concluded  that  it  had  itself 
eaten  of  the  fruit,  and  acquired  thereby  a  gift  which  she 
thought  confined  to  herself  and  her  husband. 

But  we  may  be  sure,  that,  although,  to  mark  his  hatred  of 
sin,  God  pronounced  a  curse  on  the  serpent,  it  was  against 

*  Genesis,  3  :  14, 


12  TH£    FIRST    PROPHECY. 

the  devil,  who  had  actuated  the  serpent,  that  the  curse  was 
chiefly  directed.  It  may  be  said  that  the  serpent  itself  must 
have  been  innocent  in  the  matter,  and  that  the  curse  should 
have  fallen  on  none  but  the  tempter.  But  you  are  to  remem- 
ber that  the  serpent  suffered  not  alone :  every  living-  thing 
had  share  in  the  consequences  of  disobedience.  And  although 
the  effect  of  man's  apostasy  on  the  serpent  may  have  been 
more  signal  and  marked  than  on  other  creatures,  we  have 
no  right  to  conclude  that  there  was  entailed  so  much  greater 
suffering  on  this  reptile  as  to  distinguish  it  in  misery  from 
the  rest  of  the  animal  creation. 

But  undoubtedly  it  was  the  devil,  more  emphatically  than 
the  serpent,  that  God  cursed  for  the  seduction  of  man.  The 
words,  indeed,  of  our  text  have  a  primary  application  to  the 
serpent.  It  is  most  strictly  true,  that,  ever  since  the  fall,  there 
has  been  enmity  between  man  and  the  serpent.  Every  man 
will  instinctively  recoil  at  the  sight  of  a  serpent.  We  have 
a  natural  and  unconquerable  aversion  from  this  tribe  of  liv- 
ing things,  which  we  feel  not  in  respect  to  others,  even  fiercer 
and  more  noxious.  Men,  if  they  find  a  serpent,  will  always 
strive  to  destroy  it,  bruising  the  head  in  which  the  poison 
lies;  whilst  the  serpent  will  often  avenge  itself,  wounding  its 
assailant,  if  not  mortally,  yet  so  as  to  make  it  true  that  it 
bruises  his  heel. 

But  whilst  the  words  have  thus,  undoubtedly,  a  fulfillment 
in  respect  of  the  serpent,  we  cannot  question  that  their  re- 
ference is  chiefly  to  the  devil.  It  was  the  devil,  and  not  the 
serpent,  which  had  beguiled  the  woman  ;  and  it  is  only  in  a 
very  limited  sense  that  it  could  be  said  to  the  serpent,  "  Be- 
cause thou  hast  done  this."  We  are  indeed  so  unacquainted 
with  transactions  in  the  world  of  spirits,  that  we  cannot  pre- 
tend to  determine  what,  or  whether  any,  immediate  change 
passed  on  the  condition  of  Satan  and  his  associates.  If  the 
curse  upon  the  serpent  took  effect  upon  the  devil,  it  would 
seem  probable,  that,  ever  since  the  fall,  the  power  of  Satan 
has  been  specially  limited  to  this  earth  and  its  inhabitants. 
We  may  gather  from  the  denunciation,  "  Upon  thy  belly 
shalt  thou  go,  and  dust  shalt  thou  eat.  all  the  days  of  thy  life,*' 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY.  13 

that,  in  place  of  being:  allowed,  as  he  might  before  time  have 
been,  to  range  through  the  universe,  machinating  against  the 
peace  of  many  orders  of  intelligence,  he  was  confined  to  the 
arena  of  humanity,  and  forced  to  concentrate  his  energies  on 
the  destruction  of  a  solitary  race.  It  would  seem  altogether 
possible,  that,  after  his  ejectment  from  heaven,  Satan  had 
liberty  to  traverse  the  vast  area  of  creation ;  and  that  far-off 
stars  and  planets  were  accessible  to  his  wanderings.  It  is  to 
the  full  as  possible,  that,  as  soon  as  man  apostatized,  God  con- 
firmed in  their  allegiance  other  orders  of  beings,  and  shielded 
them  from  the  assaults  of  the  evil  one,  by  chaining  him  to 
the  earth  on  which  he  had  just  won  a  victory.  And  if,  as  the 
result  of  his  having  seduced  our  first  parents,  Satan  were 
thus  sentenced  to  confinement  to  this  globe,  we  may  readily 
understand  how  words,  addressed  to  the  serpent,  dooming  it 
to  trail  itself  along  the  ground,  had  distinct  reference  to  the 
tempter  by  whom  that  serpent  had  been  actuated. 

But,  whatever  be  our  opinion  concerning  this  part  of  the 
curse,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  our  text  must  be  explained 
of  the  devil,  though,  as  we  have  shown  you,  it  has  a  partial 
fulfillment  in  respect  of  the  serpent.  We  must  here  consider 
God  as  speaking  to  the  tempter,  and  announcing  war  be- 
tween Satan  and  man.  We  have  called  the  words  a  pro- 
phecy ;  and,  when  considered  as  addressed  to  the  devil,  such 
is  properly  their  designation.  But  when  we  remember  that 
they  were  spoken  in  the  hearing  of  Adam  and  Eve,  we  must 
regard  them  also  in  the  light  of  a  promise.  And  it  is  well 
worth  remark,  that,  before  God  told  the  woman  of  her  sor- 
row and  her  trouble,  and  before  he  told  the  man  of  the  thorn, 
and  the  thistle,  and  the  dust  to  which  he  should  return,  he 
caused  them  to  hear  words  which  must  have  inspired  them 
with  hope.  Vanquished  they  were  :  and  they  might  have 
thought  that,  with  an  undisputed  supremacy,  he  who  had 
prevailed  to  their  overthrow  would  ever  after  hold  them  in 
vassalage.  Must  it  not  then  have  been  cheering  to  them, 
whilst  they  stood  as  criminals  before  their  God,  expecting 
the  sentence  which  disobedience  had  provoked,  to  hear  that 
their  conqueror  should  not  enjoy  unassaulted  his  conquest 


14  THE    FIRST    TROrilECY. 

but  that  there  were  yet  undeveloped  arrangements  which 
would  insure  to  humanity  final  mastery  over  the  oppressor  ? 
And  though,  when  God  turned  and  spake  to  themselves,  he 
gave  no  word  of  encouragement,  but  dwelt  only  on  the  toil 
and  the  death  which  they  had  wrought  into  their  portion, 
still  the  prophecy  to  which  they  had  listened  must  have 
sunk  into  their  hearts  as  a  promise  ;  and  when,  with  linger- 
ing steps,  and  the  first  tears  ever  wept,  they  departed  from 
the  glorious  precincts  of  Eden,  we  may  believe  that  one  sus- 
tained the  other  by  whispering  the  words,  though  "  thou 
shalt  bruise  his  heel,  it  shall  bruise  thy  head." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  intimations  of  redemption 
were  given  to  our  guilty  parents,  and  that  they  were  in- 
structed by  God  to  offer  sacrifices  which  should  shadow  out 
the  method  of  atonement.  And  though  it  does  not  of  course 
follow  that  we  are  in  possession  of  all  the  notices  mercifully 
afforded,  it  seems  fair  to  conclude,  as  well  from  the  time  of 
delivery  as  from  the  nature  of  the  announcement,  that  our 
text  was  designed  to  convey  comfort  to  the  desponding  ;  and 
that  it  was  received  as  a  message  breathing  deliverance  by 
those  who  expected  an  utter  condemnation. 

We  are  not,  however,  much  concerned  with  the  degree  in 
which  the  prophecy  was  at  first  understood.  It  cannot  justly 
be  called  an  obscure  prophecy  :  for  it  is  quite  clear  on  the 
fact,  that,  by  some  means  or  another,  man  should  gain  ad- 
vantage over  Satan.  And  though,  if  considered  as  referring 
to  Christ,  there  be  a  mystery  about  it,  which  could  only  be 
cleared  up  by  after  events,  yet,  as  a  general  prediction  of  vic- 
tory, it  must  have  commended  itself,  we  think,  to  the  under- 
standing and  the  heart  of  those  of  our  race  by  whom  it  was 
first  heard. 

But  whether  or  no  the  prophecy  were  intelligible  to  Adam 
and  Eve,  unto  ourselves  it  is  a  wonderful  passage,  spreading 
itself  over  the  whole  of  time,  and  giving  outlines  of  the  his- 
tory of  this  world  from  the  beginning  to  the  final  consum- 
mation. We  caution  you  at  once  against  an  idea  which 
many  have  entertained,  that  the  prediction  before  us  refers 
only,  or  even  chiefly,  to  the  Redeemer.  We  shall  indeed  find, 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY.  15 

as  we  proceed,  that  Christ,  who  was  specially  the  seed  of  the 
woman,  specially  bruised  the  head  of  the  serpent.  But  the 
prophecy  is  to  be  interpreted  in  a  much  larger  sense.  It  is 
nothing  less  than  a  delineation  of  an  unwearied  conflict  of 
which  this  earth  shall  be  the  theatre,  and  which  shall  issue, 
though  not  without  partial  disaster  to  man,  in  the  complete 
discomfiture  of  Satan  and  his  associates.  And  no  man  who 
is  familiar  with  other  predictions  of  Scripture,  can  fail  to 
find,  in  this  brief  and  solitary  verse,  the  announcement  of 
those  very  struggles  and  conquests  which  occupy  the  gor- 
geous poetry  of  Isaiah,  and  crowd  the  mystic  canvass  of 
Daniel  and  St.  John. 

We  wish  you,  therefore,  to  dismiss,  if  you  have  ever  en- 
tertained, contracted  views  of  the  meaning  of  our  text.  It 
must  strike  you,  at  the  first  glance,  that  though  Christ  was  in 
a  peculiar  sense  the  seed  of  the  woman,  the  phrase  applies  to 
others  as  well  as  the  Redeemer.  We  are  therefore  bound,  by 
all  fair  laws  of  interpretation,  to  consider  that  the  prophecy 
must  be  fulfilled  in  more  than  one  individual ;  especially  as 
it  declares  that  the  woman,  as  well  as  her  seed,  should  enter- 
tain the  enmity,  and  thus  marks  out  more  than  a  single  party 
as  engaging  in  the  conflict. 

Now  there  are  one  or  two  preliminary  observations  which 
require  all  your  attention,  if  you  hope  to  enter  into  the  full 
meaning  of  the  prediction. 

We  wish  you,  first  of  all,  to  remark  particularly  the  ex- 
pression, "  I  will  put  enmity."  The  enmity,  you  observe, 
had  no  natural  existence  :  God  declares  his  intention  of  put- 
ting enmity.  As  soon  as  man  transgressed,  his  nature  be- 
came evil,  and  therefore  he  was  at  peace,  and  not  at  war 
with  the  devil.  And  thus,  had  there  been  no  interference  on 
the  part  of  the  Almighty,  Satan  and  man  would  have  formed 
alliance  against  heaven,  and,  in  place  of  a  contest  between 
themselves,  have  carried  on  nothing  but  battle  with  God. 
There  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  a  native  enmity  between  fallen 
angels  and  fallen  men.  Both  are  evil,  and  both  became  evil 
through  apostasy.  But  evil,  wheresoever  it  exists,  will  always 
league  against  good ;  so  that  fallen  angels  and  fallen  men 


1(3  THE    FIUST    PROPHECY. 

were  sure  to  join  in  a  desperate  companionship.  Hence  the 
declaration,  that  enmity  should  be  put,  must  have  been  to 
Satan  the  first  notice  of  redemption.  This  lofty  spirit  must 
have  calculated,  that,  if  he  could  induce  men,  as  he  had  in- 
duced angels,  to  join  in  rebellion,  he  should  have  them  for 
allies  in  his  every  enterprise  against  heaven.  There  was 
nothing  of  enmity  between  himself  and  the  spirits  who  had 
joined  in  the  effort  to  dethrone  the  Omnipotent.  At  least, 
whatever  the  feuds  and  jarrings  which  might  disturb  the 
rebels  they  were  linked,  as  with  an  iron  band,  in  the  one 
o-reat  'object  of  opposing  good.  So  that  when  he  heard  that 
there  should  be  enmity  between  himself  and  the  woman,  he 
must  have  felt  that  some  apparatus  would  be  brought  to  bear 
upon  man  ;  and  that,  though  he  had  succeeded  in  depraving 
human  nature,  and  thus  assimilating  it  to  his  own,  it  should 
be  renewed  by  some  mysterious  process,  and  wrought  up  to 
the  lost  power  of  resisting  its  conqueror. 

\nd  accordingly  it  has  come  to  pass,  that  there  is  enmity 
on  the  earth  between  man  and  Satan ;  but  an  enmity  super- 
naturally  put,  and  not  naturally  entertained.    Unless  God 
pour  his  converting  grace  into  the  soul,  there  will  be  no  at- 
tempt to  oppose  Satan,  but  we  shall  continue  to  the  end  of 
our  days  his  willing  captives  and  servants.    And  therefore  it 
is  God  who  puts  the  enmity.    Introducing  a  new  principle 
into  the  heart,  he  causes  conflict  where  there  had  heretofore 
been  peace,  inclining  and  enabling  man  to  rise  against  Ins 
tyrant     So  that,  in  these  first  words  of  the  prophecy,  you 
have  the  clearest  intimation  that  God  designed  to  visit  the 
depraved  nature  with  a  renovating  energy.  And  now,  when- 
soever you  see  an  individual  delivered  from  the  love,  and 
endowed  with  a  hatred  of  sin,  resisting  those  passions  which 
held  naturally  sway  within  his  breast,  and  thus  grappling 
with  the  fallen  spirit  which  claims  dominion  upon  earth,  you 
are  surveying  the  workings  of  a  principle  which  is  wholly 
from  above;  and  you  are  to  consider  that  you  have  before 
you  the  fulfillment  of  the  declaration,  <;  I  will  put  enmity  be- 
tween thee  and  the  woman." 

We  ao  on  to  observe  that  the  enmity,  being  thus  a  super- 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY.  17 

human  thing,  implanted  by  God  and  not  generated  by  man, 
will  not  subsist  universally,  but  only  in  particular  cases. 
You  will  have  seen,  from  our  foregoing  showings,  that  a 
man  must  be  renewed  in  order  to  his  fighting  with  Satan  ; 
so  that  God's  putting  the  enmity  is  God's  giving  saving 
grace.  The  prophecy  cannot  be  interpreted  as  declaring  that 
the  whole  human  race  should  be  at  war  with  the  devil :  the 
undoubted  matter-of-fact  being  that  only  a  portion  of  the 
race  resumes  its  loyalty  to  Jehovah.  And  we  are  bound, 
therefore,  before  proceeding  further  with  our  interpretation, 
to  examine  whether  this  limitation  is  marked  out  by  the  pre- 
diction— whether,  that  is,  we  might  infer,  from  the  terms  of 
the  prophecy,  that  the  placed  enmity  would  be  partial,  not 
universal. 

Now  we  think  that  the  expression,  "  Thy  seed  and  her 
seed,"  shows  at  once  that  the  enmity  would  be  felt  by  only  a 
part  of  mankind.  The  enmity  is  to  subsist,  not  merely  be- 
tween Satan  and  the  woman,  but  between  his  seed  and  her 
seed.  But  the  seed  of  Satan  can  only  be  interpreted  of  wicked 
men.  Thus  Christ  said  to  the  Jews,  "  Ye  are  of  your  father 
the  devil ;  and  the  lusts  of  your  father  ye  will  do."*  Thus 
also,  in  expounding  the  parable  of  the  tares  and  the  wheat, 
he  said,  "  The  tares  are  the  children  of  the  wicked  one."t 
There  is,  probably,  the  same  reference  in  the  expression,  "  O 
generation  of  vipers."  And,  in  like  manner,  you  find  St.  John 
declaring,  "  He  that  committeth  sin  is  of  the  devil.":);  Thus, 
then,  by  the  seed  of  Satan  we  understand  wicked  men,  those 
who  resist  God's  Spirit,  and  obstinately  adhere  to  the  service 
of  the  devil.  And  if  we  must  interpret  the  seed  of  Satan  of  a 
portion  of  mankind,  it  is  evident  that  the  prophecy  marks 
not  out  the  enmity  as  general,  but  indicates  just  that  limita- 
tion which  has  been  supposed  in  our  preceding  remarks. 

But  then  the  question  occurs,  how  are  we  to  interpret  the 
woman  and  her  seed  ?  Such  expression  seems  to  denote  the 
whole  human  race.  What  right  have  we  to  limit  it  to  a  part 
of  that  race  ?   We  reply,  that  it  certainly  does  not  denote  the 

*  John,  8  :  44.  t  Matthew,  13  :  38.  1 1  John,  3  :  8. 

3 


jg  THE    FIRST    PROPHECY. 

whole  human  race:  for  if  you  interpret  it  literally  of  Eve 
and  her  descendants,  Adam,  at  least,  is  left  out  who  was 
neither  the  woman  nor  her  seed.  But  without  insisting  on 
the  objection  under  this  form,  fatal  as  it  is  to  the  proposed 
interpretation,  we  should  not  be  warranted,  though  we  have 
no  distinct  account  of  the  faith  and  repentance  of  Adam,  in 
so  explaining  a  passage  as  to  exclude  our  common  forefathei 
from  final  salvation.  You  must  see,  that,  if  we  take  literally 
the  woman  and  her  seed,  no  enmity  was  put  between  Adam 
and  Satan ;  for  Adam  was  neither  the  woman  nor  the  seed 
of  the  woman.  And  if  Adam  continued  in  friendship  with 
Satan,  it  must  be  certain  that  he  perished  in  his  sins  :  a  con- 
clusion to  which  we  dare  not  advance  without  scriptural 
testimony  the  most  clear  and  explicit. 

We  cannot,  then,  understand  the  woman  and  her  seed,  as 
Eve  and  her  natural  descendants.  We  must  rather  believe, 
that  as  the  seed  of  the  serpent  is  to  be  interpreted  spiritually 
and  symbolically,  so  also  is  the  seed  of  the  woman.  And 
when  you  remember  that  Eve  was  a  signal  type  of  the  church, 
there  is  an  end  of  the  difficulties  by  which  we  seem  met.  You 
know,  from  the  statement  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Romans,  that 
Adam  was  the  figure  of  Christ.*  Now  it  was  his  standing  to 
Eve  in  the  very  same  relationship  in  which  Christ  stands  to 
the  church,  which  specially  made  Adam  the  figure  of  Christ. 
The  side  of  Adam  had  been  opened,  when  a  deep  sleep  fell 
on  him,  in  order  that  Eve  might  be  formed,  an  extract  from 
himself.  And  thus,  as  Hooker  saith,  "  God  frameth  the  church 
out  of  the  very  flesh,  the  very  wounded  and  bleeding  side  of 
the  Son  of  man.  His  body  crucified,  and  his  blood  shed  for 
the  life  of  the  world,  are  the  true  elements  of  that  heavenly 
being  which  maketh  us  such  as  himself  is,  of  whom  we  come. 
For  which  cause  the  words  of  Adam  may  be  fitly  the  words 
of  Christ  concerning  his  church,  '  Flesh  of  my  flesh,  and 
bone  of  my  bones.' "  We  cannot  go  at  length  into  the  parti- 
culars of  the  typical  resemblance  between  Eve  and  the 
church.  It  is  sufficient  to  observe,  that  since  Adam,  the  hus- 


Romans,  5  :  14. 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY.  19 

band  of  Eve,  was  the  figure  of  Christ,  and  since  Christ  is  the 
husband  of  the  church,  it  seems  naturally  to  follow  that  Eve 
was  the  figure  or  type  of  the  church.  And  when  we  have 
established  this  typical  character  of  Eve,  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand who  are  meant  by  the  woman  and  her  seed.  The  true 
church  of  God  in  every  age — whether  you  consider  it  as  re- 
presented by  its  head,  which  is  Christ ;  whether  you  survey 
it  collectively  as  a  body,  or  resolve  it  into  its  separate  mem- 
bers— this  true  church  of  God  must  be  regarded  as  denoted 
by  the  woman  and  her  seed.  And  though  you  may  think — 
for  we  wish,  as  we  proceed,  to  anticipate  objections — that,  if 
Eve  be  the  church,  it  is  strange  that  her  seed  should  be  also 
the  church,  yet  it  is  the  common  usage  of  Scripture  to  repre- 
sent the  church  as  the  mother,  and  every  new  convert  as  a 
child.  Thus,  in  addressing  the  Jewish  church,  and  describ- 
ing her  glory  and  her  greatness  in  the  latter  days,  Isaiah 
saith,  "  Thy  sons  shall  come  from  far,  and  thy  daughters 
shall  be  nursed  at  thy  side."  And  again — contrasting  the 
Jewish  and  Gentile  churches — "  More  are  the  children  of  the 
desolate  than  the  children  of  the  married  wife,  saith  the 
Lord."  So  that,  although  the  church  can  be  nothing  more 
than  the  aggregate  of  individual  believers,  the  inspired  wri- 
ters commonly  describe  the  church  as  a  parent,  and  believers 
as  the  offspring ;  and  in  understanding,  therefore,  the  church 
and  its  members  by  the  woman  and  her  seed,  we  cannot  be 
advocating  a  forced  interpretation. 

And  now  we  have  made  a  long  advance  towards  the  tho- 
rough elucidation  of  the  prophecy.  We  have  shown  you, 
that,  inasmuch  as  the  enmity  is  supernaturally  put,  it  can 
only  exist  in  a  portion  of  mankind.  We  then  endeavored  to 
ascertain  this  portion  :  and  we  found  that  the  true  church  of 
God,  in  every  age,  comprehends  all  those  who  war  with  Sa- 
tan and  his  seed.  So  that  the  representation  of  the  predic- 
tion—a representation  whose  justice  we  have  yet  to  exa- 
mine— is  simply  that  of  a  perpetual  conflict,  on  this  earth, 
between  wicked  angels  and  wicked  men  on  the  one  side,  and 
the  church  of  God,  or  the  company  of  true  believers,  on  the 
other ;  such  conflict,   though  occasioning  partial  injury  to 


20  THE    FIRST    PROPHECY. 

the  church,  always  issuing  in  the  discomfiture  of  tiie  wicked, 
We  now  set  ourselves  to  demonstrate  the  accuracy  of  this 
representation.  We  have  already  said  that  there  are  three 
points  of  view  in  which  the  church  may  be  regarded.  We 
may  consider  it,  as  represented  by  its  head,  which  is  Christ ; 
secondly,  collectively  as  a  body ;  thirdly,  as  resolved  into  its 
separate  members.  We  shall  endeavor  to  show  you  briefly, 
in  each  of  these  cases,  the  fidelity  of  the  description,  "  It  shall 
bruise  thy  head,  and  thou  shalt  bruise  his  heel." 

Now  the  enmity  was  never  put  in  such  overpowering  mea- 
sure, as  when  the  man  Christ  Jesus  was  its  residence.  It  was 
in  Christ  Jesus  in  one  sense  naturally,  and  in  another  super- 
naturally.  He  was  born  pure,  and  with  a  native  hatred  of 
sin ;  but  then  he  had  been  miraculously  generated,  in  order 
that  his  nature  might  be  thus  hostile  to  evil.  And  never  did 
there  move  the  being  on  this  earth  who  hated  sin  with  as 
perfect  a  hatred,  or  who  was  as  odious  in  return  to  all  the 
emissaries  of  darkness.  It  was  just  the  holiness  of  the  Media- 
tor which  stirred  up  against  him  all  the  passions  of  a  profli- 
gate world,  and  provoked  that  fury  of  assault  which  rushed 
in  from  the  hosts  of  reprobate  spirits.  There  was  thrown  a 
perpetual  reproach  on  a  proud  and  sensual  generation,  by 
the  spotlessness  of  that  righteous  individual,  "  who  did  no 
sin,  neither  was  guile  found  in  his  mouth."*  And  if  he  had 
not  been  so  far  separated,  by  the  purities  of  life  and  conver- 
sation, from  all  others  of  his  nature  ;  or  if  vice  had  received 
a  somewhat  less  tremendous  rebuke  from  the  blamelessness 
of  his  every  action  ;  we  may  be  sure  that  his  might  and  be- 
nevolence would  have  gathered  the  nation  to  his  disciple- 
ship,  and  that  the  multitude  would  never  have  been  worked 
up  to  demand  his  crucifixion. 

The  great  secret  of  the  opposition  to  Christ  lay  in  the  fact, 
that  he  was  not  such  an  one  as  ourselves.  We  are  accus- 
tomed to  think  that  the  lowliness  of  his  condition,  and  the 
want  of  external  majesty  and  pomp,  moved  the  Jews  to  re- 
ject their  Messiah  :  yet  it  is  by  no  means  clear  that  these  were, 

*  1  Peter,  2  :  22. 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY.  til 

in  the  main,  the  producing  causes  of  rejection.  If  Christ 
came  not  with  the  purple  and  circumstance  of  human  sove- 
reignty, he  displayed  the  possession  of  a  supernatural  power, 
which,  even  on  the  most  carnal  calculation,  was  more  valu- 
able, because  more  effective,  than  the  staunchest  apparatus 
of  earthly  supremacy.  The  peasant,  who  could  work  the 
miracles  which  Christ  worked,  would  be  admitted,  on  all 
hands,  to  have  mightier  engines  at  his  disposal  than  the 
prince  who  is  clothed  with  the  ermine  and  followed  by  the 
warriors.  And  if  the  Jews  looked  for  a  Messiah  who  would 
lead  them  to  mastery  over  enemies,  then,  we  contend,  there 
was  every  thing  in  Christ  to  induce  them  to  give  him  their 
allegiance.  The  power  which  could  vanquish  death  by  a 
word  might  cause  hosts  to  fall,  as  fell  the  hosts  of  Senna- 
cherib ;  and  where  then  was  the  foe  who  could  have  resisted 
the  leader  ? 

We  canuot,  therefore,  think  that  it  was  merely  the  ab- 
sence of  human  pageantry  which  moved  the  great  ones  of 
Judea  to  throw  scorn  upon  Jesus.  It  is  true,  they  were  ex- 
pecting an  earthly  deliverer.  But  Christ  displayed  precisely 
those  powers,  which,  wielded  by  Moses,  had  prevailed  to  de- 
liver their  nation  from  Egypt;  and  assuredly  then,  if  that 
strength  dwelt  in  Jesus  which  had  discomfited  Pharaoh,  and 
broken  the  thraldom  of  centuries,  it  could  not  have  been  the 
proved  incapacity  of  effecting  temporal  deliverance  which 
induced  pharisees  and  scribes  to  reject  their  Messiah.  They 
could  have  tolerated  the  meanness  of  his  parentage  ;  for  that 
was  more  than  compensated  by  the  majesty  of  his  power. 
They  could  have  endured  the  lowliness  of  his  appearance ; 
for  they  could  set  against  it  his  evident  communion  with 
divinity. 

But  the  righteous  fervor  with  which  Christ  denounced 
every  abomination  in  the  land ;  the  untainted  purity  by 
which  he  shamed  the  "  whited  sepulchres "  who  deceived 
the  people  by  the  appearance  of  sanctity ;  the  rich  loveliness 
of  a  character  in  which  zeal  for  God's  glory  was  unceasing- 
ly uppermost;  the  beautiful  lustre  which  encompassed  a  be- 
ing who  could  hate  only  one  thing,  but  that  one  thing  sin  ; 


22  1HL    FIRS?    l'RUllIKCY. 

these  were  the  producing  causes  of  bitter  hostility ;  and  they 
who  would  have  haded  the  wonder-worker  with  the  shout 
and  the  plaudit,  had  he  allowed  some  license  to  the  evil  pas- 
sions of  our  nature,  gave  him  nothing  but  the  sneer  and  the 
execration,  when  he  waged  open  war  with  lust  and  hy- 
pocrisy. 

And  thus  it  was  that  enmity,  the  fiercest  and  most  inve- 
terate, was  put  between  the  seed  of  the  woman  and  the  seed 
of  the  serpent.  The  serpent  himself  came  to  the  assistance 
of  his  seed ;  evil  angels  conspired  with  evil  men  ;  and  the 
whole  energies  of  apostasy  gathered  themselves  to  the  effort 
of  destroying  the  champion  of  God  and  of  truth.  Yea,  and 
for  a  while  success  seemed  to  attend  the  endeavor.  There 
was  a  bruising  of  the  heel  of  the  seed  of  the  woman.  "  He 
came  unto  his  own,  and  his  own  received  him  not."*  Charged 
only  with  an  embassage  of  mercy ;  sent  by  the  Father — not 
to  condemn  the  world,  though  rebellion  had  overspread  its 
provinces,  and  there  was  done  the  foulest  despite  to  God,  in 
its  every  section,  and  by  its  every  tenant — but  that  the  world 
through  him  might  have  life ;  he  was,  nevertheless,  scorned 
as  a  deceiver,  and  hunted  down  as  a  malefactor.  And  if  it 
were  a  bruising  of  the  heel,  that  he  should  be  "  a  man  of  sor- 
rows and  acquainted  with  grief  :t  that  a  nation  should  des- 
pise him,  and  friends  deny  and  forsake  and  betray  him  ;  that 
he  should  be  buffeted  with  temptation,  convulsed  by  agony, 
lacerated  by  stripes,  pierced  by  nails,  crowned  with  thorns  ; 
then  was  the  heel  of  the  Redeemer  bruised  by  Satan ;  for  to 
all  this  injury  the  fallen  angel  instigated  and  nerved  his 
seed.  But  though  the  heel  was  bruised,  this  was  the  whole 
extent  of  effected  damage.  There  was  no  real  advantage 
gained  over  the  Mediator  :  on  the  contrary,  whilst  Satan  was 
in  the  act  of  bruising-  Christ's  heel,  Christ  was  in  the  act  of 
bruising  Satan's  head.  The  Savior,  indeed,  exposed  himself 
to  every  kind  of  insult  and  wrong.  Whilst  enduring  "  the 
contradiction  of  sinners  against  himself,"}  it  is  not  to  be  de- 
nied that  a  strange  result  was  brought  round  by  the  machi- 
nations of  the  evil  ones ;  for  suffering,  which  is  the  attendant 

*  John.   1:11.  t  Isaiah,  53  :  3.  t  Hebrews,  12  :  3. 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY.  23 

on  sinfulness,  was  made  to  empty  all  its  pangs  into  the  bo- 
som of  innocence.  And  seeing  that  his  holiness  should  have 
exempted  his  humanity  from  all  kinsmanship  with  sorrow 
and  anguish,  we  are  free  to  allow  that  the  heel  was  bruised, 
when  pain  found  entrance  into  this  humanity,  and  grief, 
heavier  than  had  oppressed  any  being  of  our  race,  weighed 
down  his  over-wrought  spirit. 

But,  then,  there  was  not  an  iota  of  his  sufferings  which 
went  not  towards  liquidating  the  vast  debt  which  man  owed 
to  God,  and  which,  therefore,  contributed  not  to  our  redemp- 
tion from  bondage.  There  was  not  a  pang  by  which  the  Me- 
diator was  torn,  and  not  a  grief  by  which  his  soul  was  dis- 
quieted, which  helped  not  on  the  achievement  of  human  de- 
liverance, and  which,  therefore,  dealt  not  out  a  blow  to  the 
despotism  of  Satan.  So  that,  from  the  beginning,  the  bruis- 
ing of  Christ's  heel  was  the  bruising  of  Satan's  head.  In 
prevailing,  so  far  as  he  did  prevail,  against  Christ,  Satan  was 
only  effecting  his  own  discomfiture  and  downfall.  He 
touched  the  heel,  he  could  not  touch  the  head  of  the  Medi- 
ator. If  he  could  have  seduced  him  into  the  commission  of 
evil ;  if  he  could  have  profaned,  by  a  solitary  thought,  the 
sanctuary  of  his  soul ;  then  it  would  have  been  the  head 
which  he  had  bruised ;  and  rising  triumphant  over  man's 
surety,  he  would  have  shouted,  "  Victory  !"  and  this  crea- 
tion have  become  for  ever  his  own.  But  whilst  he  could 
only  cause  pain,  and  not  pollution  ;  whilst  he  could  dislocate 
by  agony,  but  not  defile  by  impurity  ;  he  reached  indeed  the 
heel,  but  came  not  near  the  head ;  and,  making  the  Savior's 
life-time  one  dark  series  of  afflictions,  weakened,  at  every 
step,  his  own  hold  upon  humanity. 

And  when,  at  last,  he  so  bruised  the  heel  as  to  nail  Christ 
to  the  cross,  amid  the  loathings  and  revilings  of  the  multi- 
tude, then  it  was  that  his  own  head  was  bruised,  even  to  the 
being  crushed.  "Through  death,"  we  are  told,  "Christ 
Jesus  destroyed  him  that  had  the  power  of  death,  that  is,  the 
devil."*     He  fell  indeed ;  and  evil  angels,  and   evil   men, 

*  Heb.  2  :  14. 


24  THK    FinST    PROPHECY. 

might  have  thought  him  for  ever  defeated.  But  in  grasping 
this  mighty  prey,  death  paralyzed  itself;  in  breaking  down 
the  temple,  Satan  demolished  his  own  throne.  It  was,  as  ye 
all  know,  by  dying,  that  Christ  finished  the  achievement 
which,  from  all  eternity,  he  had  covenanted  to  undertake. 
By  dyino-,  he  reinstated  fallen  man  in  the  position  from 
which  he  had  been  hurled.  Death  came  against  the  Media- 
tor: but,  in  submitting  to  it,  Christ,  if  we  may  use  such 
image,  seized  on  the  destroyer,  and,  waving  the  skeleton-form 
as  a  sceptre  over  this  creation,  broke  the  spell  of  a  thousand 
generations,  dashing  away  the  chains,  and  opening  the 
graves,  of  an  oppressed  and  rifled  population.  And  when  he 
had  died,  and  descended  into  the  grave,  and  returned  with- 
out seeing  corruption,  then  was  it  made  possible  that  every 
child  of  Adam  might  be  emancipated  from  the  dominion  of 
evil ;  and,  in  place  of  the  wo  and  the  shame  which  trans- 
gression had  won  as  the  heritage  of  man,  there  was  the  beaU- 
tiful  brightness  of  a  purchased  immortality  wooing  the  ac- 
ceptance of  the  sons  and  daughters  of  our  race.  The  strong 
man  armed  had  kept  his  goods  in  peace  ;  and  Satan,  having 
seduced  men  to  be  his  companions  in  rebellion,  might  have 
felt  secure  of  having  them  as  his  companions  in  torment. 
But  the  stronger  than  he  drew  nigh,  and,  measuring  wea- 
pons with  him  in  the  garden  and  on  the  cross,  received 
wounds  which  were  but  trophies  of  victory,  and  dealt  wounds 
which  annihilated  power.  And  when,  bruised  indeed,  yet 
only  marked  with  honorable  scars  which  told  out  his  tri- 
umph to  the  loftiest  orders  of  intelligent  being,  the  Redeemer 
of  mankind  soared  on  high,  and  sent  proclamation  through 
the  universe,  that  death  was  abolished,  and  the  ruined  re- 
deemed, and  the  gates  of  heaven  thrown  open  to  the  rebel 
and  the  outcast,  was  there  not  an  accomplishment,  the  most 
literal  and  the  most  energetic,  of  that  prediction  which  de- 
clared to  Satan  concerning  the  seed  of  the  woman,  "  it  shall 
bruise  thy  head  and  thou  shalt  bruise  his  heel?" 

Such  is  the  first  and  great  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy.  The 
church,  represented  by  its  head  who  was  specially  the  seed 
of  the  woman,  overthrew  the  devil  in  one  decisive  and  des- 

l 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY.  25 

perate  struggle,  and,  though  not  itself  unwounded,  received 
no  blow  which  rebounded  not  to  the  crushing  its  opponent. 

We  proceed,  secondly,  to  consider  the  church  collectively 
as  a  body.  We  need  scarcely  observe  that,  from  the  first,  the 
righteous  amongst  men  have  been  objects  of  the  combined 
assault  of  their  evil  fellows  and  evil  angels.  The  enmity 
has  been  put,  and  strikingly  developed.  On  the  one  hand, 
it  has  been  the  endeavor  of  the  church  to  vindicate  God's 
honor,  and  arrest  the  workings  of  wickedness  :  on  the  other, 
it  has  been  the  effort  of  the  serpent  and  his  seed  to  sweep 
from  the  earth  these  upholders  of  piety.  And  though  the  pro- 
mise has  all  along  been  verified,  that  the  gates  of  hell  shall 
not  prevail  against  the  church,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  a 
great  measure  of  success  has  attended  the  strivings  of  the 
adversary.  If  you  only  call  to  mind  what  fierce  persecution 
has  rushed  against  the  righteous  ;  how  by  one  engine  or 
another  there  has  been,  oftentimes,  almost  a  thorough  extinc- 
tion of  the  very  name  of  Christianity  ;  and  how,  when  out- 
wardly there  has  been  peace,  tares,  sown  by  the  enemy,  have 
sent  up  a  harvest  of  perilous  heresies  ;  you  cannot  withhold 
your  acknowledgment  that  Satan  has  bruised  the  heel  of  the 
church.  But  he  has  done  nothing  more.  If  he  have  hewn 
down  thousands  by  the  sword,  and  consumed  thousands  at 
the  stake,  thousands  have  sprung  forward  to  fill  up  the 
breach  ;  and  if  he  have  succeeded  in  pouring  forth  a  flood 
of  pestilential  doctrine,  there  have  arisen  staunch  advocates 
of  truth  who  have  stemmed  the  torrent,  and  snatched  the 
articles  of  faith,  uninjured,  from  the  deluge.  There  has  ne- 
ver been  the  time  when  God  has  been  left  without  a  witness 
upon  earth.  And  though  the  church  has  often  been  sickly 
and  weak  ;  though  the  best  blood  has  been  drained  from  her 
veins,  and  a  languor,  like  that  of  moral  palsy,  has  settled  on 
her  limbs ;  still  life  hath  never  been  wholly  extinguished  ; 
but,  after  a  while,  the  sinking  energies  have  been  marvel- 
lously recruited,  and  the  worn  and  wasted  body  has  risen  up 
more  athletic  than  before,  and  displayed  to  the  nations  all 
the  vigor  of  renovated  youth. 

So  that  only  the  heel  has  been  bruised.  And  since,  up  to 
4 


2G  THE    FIRST    PROPHECY. 

the  second  advent  of  the  Lord,  the  church  shall  he  battered 
with  heresy,  and  persecution,  and  infidelity,  we  look  not, 
under  the  present  dispensation,  for  discontinuance  of  this 
bruising  of  the  heel.  Yet,  while  Satan  is  bruising  the 
church's  heel,  the  church,  by  God's  help,  is  bruising  Satan's 
head.  The  church  may  be  compelled  to  prophesy  in  sack- 
cloth. Affliction  may  be  her  portion,  as  it  was  that  of  her 
glorified  head.  But  the  church  is,  throughout,  God's  witness 
upon  earth.  The  church  is  God's  instrument  for  carrying 
on  those  purposes  which  shall  terminate  in  the  final  setting 
up  of  the  Mediator's  kingdom.  And.  oh,  there  is  not  won 
over  a  single  soul  to  Christ,  and  the  Gospel  message  makes 
not  its  way  to  a  single  heart,  without  an  attendant  effect  as 
of  a  stamping  on  the  head  of  the  tempter  :  for  a  captive  is 
delivered  from  the  oppressor,  and  to  deliver  the  slave  is  to 
defeat  the  tyrant.  Thus  the  seed  of  the  woman  is  continu- 
ally bruising  the  head  of  the  serpent.  And  whensoever  the 
church,  as  an  engine  in  God's  hands,  makes  a  successful 
stand  for  piety  and  truth  ;  whensoever,  sending  out  her  mis- 
sionaries to  the  broad  waste  of  heathenism,  she  demolishes 
an  altar  of  superstition,  and  teaches  the  pagan  to  cast  his 
idols  to  the  mole  and  the  bat ;  or  whensoever,  assaulting 
mere  nominal  Christianity,  she  fastens  men  to  practice  as  the 
alone  test  of  profession  ;  then  does  she  strike  a  blow  which 
is  felt  at  the  very  centre  of  the  kingdom  of  darkness,  and 
then  is  she  experiencing  a  partial  fulfilment  of  the  promise, 
"  God  shall  bruise  Satan  under  your  feet  shortly."* 

And  when  the  fierce  and  on-going  conflict  shall  be  brought 
to  a  close  ;  when  this  burdened  creation  shall  have  shaken 
off  the  slaves  and  the  objects  of  concupiscence,  and  the 
church  of  the  living  God  shall  reign,  with  its  head,  over  the 
tribes  and  provinces  of  an  evangelized  earth ;  then  in  the 
completeness  of  the  triumph  of  righteousness  shall  be  the 
completeness  of  the  serpent's  discomfiture.  And  as  the  angel 
and  the  archangel  contrast  the  slight  injury  which  Satan 
could  ever  cause  to  the  church,  with  that  overwhelming 

»  Rom    1G:20. 


XJIfc;    FIRST    PROPHECY.  27 

ruin  which  the  church  has,  at  last,  hurled  down  upon  Satan; 
as  they  compare  the  brief  struggle  and  the  everlasting  glory 
of  the  one,  with  the  shadowy  success  and  the  never-ending- 
torments  of  the  other  ;  will  they  not  decide,  and  tell  out  their 
decision  in  language  of  rapture  and  admiration,  that,  if  ever 
prediction  were  fulfilled  to  the  very  letter,  it  is  that  which, 
addressed  to  the  serpent,  and  describing  the  church  as  the 
seed  of  the  woman,  declared,  "it  shall  bruise  thy  head,  and 
thou  shalt  bruise  his  heel  7" 

Such  is  the  second  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy  of  our  text. 
The  church,  considered  collectively  as  a  body,  is  so  assaulted 
by  the  serpent  and  his  seed  that  its  heel  is  bruised  :  but  even 
now  it  offers  such  resistance  to  evil,  and  hereafter  it  shall 
triumph  so  signally  over  every  opponent,  that  the  prediction, 
"  it  shall  bruise  thy  head,"  must  be  received  as  destined  to  a 
literal  accomplishment. 

We  have  yet  to  notice  the  third  fulfilment.  We  may  re- 
solve the  church  into  its  separate  members,  and,  taking  each 
individual  believer  as  the  seed  of  the  woman,  show  you  how 
our  text  is  realized  in  his  experience. 

Now  if  there  be  enmity  between  the  serpent  and  the 
church  generally,  of  course  there  is  also  between  the  serpent 
and  each  member  of  that  church.  We  have  already  given  it 
as  the  description  of  a  converted  man,  that  he  has  been  su- 
pernaturally  excited  to  a  war  with  the  devil.  Whilst  left  in 
the  darkness  and  alienation  of  nature,  he  submits  willingly 
to  the  dominion  of  evil :  evil  is  his  element,  and  he  neither 
strives  nor  wishes  for  emancipation.  But  when  the  grace  of 
God  is  introduced  into  his  heart,  he  will  discern  quickly  the 
danger  and  hatefulness  of  sin,  and  will  yield  himself,  in  a 
higher  strength  than  his  own,  to  the  work  of  resisting  the 
serpent.  Thus  enmity  is  put  between  the  believer  and  the 
serpent  and  his  seed.  Let  a  man  give  himself  to  the  concerns 
of  eternity  ;  let  him,  in  good  earnest,  set  about  the  business 
of  the  soul's  salvation  ;  and  he  will,  assuredly,  draw  upon 
himself  the  dislike  and  opposition  of  a  whole  circle  of  world- 
ly acquaintance,  so  that  his  over-preciseness  and  austerity 
will  become  subject  of  ridicule  in  his  village  or  neighbor- 


25  THE    FIRST    PROPHECY. 

hood.  Wo  quite  mistake  the  nature  both  of  Christianity  and 
of  man,  if  we  suppose  that  opposition  to  religion  can  be  li- 
mited to  an  age  or  a  country.  Persecution,  in  its  most  terri- 
ble forms,  is  only  the  development  of  a  principle  which  must 
unavoidably  exist  until  either  Christianity  or  human  nature 
be  altered.  There  is  a  necessary  repugnance  between  Chris- 
tianity and  human  nature.  The  two  cannot  be  amalgamated  : 
one  must  be  changed  before  it  will  combine  with  the  other. 
And  we  fear  that  this  is,  in  a  degree,  an  overlooked  truth, 
and  that  men  are  disposed  to  assign  persecution  to  local  or 
temporary  causes.  But  we  wish  you  to  be  clear  on  the  fact, 
that  "  the  offence  of  the  cross"*  has  not  ceased,  and  cannot 
cease.  We  readily  allow  that  the  form,  under  which  the  ha- 
tred manifests  itself,  will  be  sensibly  affected  by  the  civiliza- 
tion and  intelligence  of  the  age.  In  days  of  an  imperfect  re- 
finement and  a  scanty  literature,  you  will  find  this  hatred 
unsheathing  the  sword,  and  lighting  the  pile  :  but  when 
human  society  is  at  a  high  point  of  polish  and  knowledge, 
and  the  principles  of  religious  toleration  are  well  understood  ^ 
there  is  perhaps,  comparatively,  small  likelihood  that  savage 
violence  will  be  the  engine  employed  against  godliness. 
Yet  there  are  a  hundred  batteries  which  may  and  will  be 
opened  upon  the  righteous.  The  follower  of  Christ  must  cal- 
culate on  many  sneers,  and  much  reviling.  He  must  look  to 
meet  often  with  coldness  and  contempt,  harder  of  endurance 
than  many  forms  of  martyrdom ;  for  the  courage  which 
could  march  to  the  stake  may  be  daunted  by  a  laugh.  And, 
frequently,  the  opposition  assumes  a  more  decided  shape. 
The  parent  will  act  harshly  towards  the  child ;  the  superior 
withdraw  his  countenance  from  the  dependent ;  and  all  be- 
cause of  a  giving  heed  to  the  directions  of  Scripture.  Reli- 
gion, as  though  it  were  rebellion,  alienates  the  affections., 
and  alters  the  wills,  of  fathers  and  guardians.  So  that  we  tell 
an  individual  that  he  blinds  himself  to  plain  matters  of  fact,  if 
he  espouse  the  opinion  that  the  apostle's  words  applied  only 
to  the  first  ages  of  Christianity,  "  all  that  will  live  godly  in 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY.  29 

Christ  Jesus  shall  suffer  persecution."*  To  "  live  godly  in 
Christ  Jesus  "  is  to  have  enmity  put  between  yourselves  and 
the  seed  of  the  serpent ;  and  you  may  be  assured,  that,  un- 
less this  enmity  be  merely  nominal  on  your  side,  it  will  ma- 
nifest itself  by  acts  on  the  other. 

Thus  the  prophecy  of  our  text  announces,  what  has  been 
verified  by  the  history  of  all  ages,  that  no  man  can  serve 
God  without  uniting  against  himself  evil  men  and  evil  an- 
gels. Evil  angels  will  assault  him,  alarmed  that  their  prey 
is  escaping  from  their  grasp.  Evil  men,  rebuked  by  his 
example,  will  become  agents  of  the  serpent,  and  strive  to 
wrench  him  from  his  righteousness. 

But  what,  after  all,  is  the  amount  of  injury  which  the  ser- 
pent and  his  seed  can  cause  to  God's  children  ?  Is  it  not  a 
truth,  which  can  only  then  be  denied  when  you  have  cashier- 
ed the  authority  of  every  page  of  the  Bible,  that  he  who 
believes  upon  Christ,  and  who,  therefore,  has  been  adopted 
through  faith  into  God's  family,  is  certain  to  be  made  more 
than  conqueror,  and  to  trample  under  foot  every  enemy  of 
salvation  ?  The  conflict  between  a  believer  and  his  foes  may 
be  long  and  painful.  The  Christian  may  be  often  forced  to 
exclaim  with  St.  Paul,  "  O  wretched  man  that  I  am,  who 
shall  deliver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death  ?"t  Engaged 
with  the  triple  band  of  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  he 
will  experience  many  partial  defeats,  and,  surprised  off  his 
guard,  or  wearied  out  with  watchings,  will  yield  to  tempta- 
tion, and  so  fall  into  sin.  But  it  is  certain,  certain  as  that 
God  is  omnipotent  and  faithful,  that  the  once  justified  man 
shall  be  enabled  to  persevere  to  the  end  ;  to  persevere,  not  in 
an  idle  dependence  on  privileges,  but  in  a  struggle  which,  if 
for  an  instant  interrupted,  is  sure  to  be  vehemently  renewed. 
And,  therefore,  the  bruising  of  the  heel  is  the  sum  total  of 
the  mischief.  Thus  much,  undoubtedly,  the  serpent  can 
effect.  He  can  harass  with  temptation,  and  occasionally 
prevail.  But  he  cannot  undo  the  radical  work  of  conver- 
sion. He  cannot  eject  the  principle  of  grace ;  and  he  cannot, 

*  Tim.  3:  12.  t  Rom.  7:  24 


10  THE    FIRST    PROPHECY. 

therefore,  bring  back  the  man  into  the  condition  of  his  slave 
or  his  subject.  Tims  he  cannot  wound  the  head  oi'  the  new 
man.  lie  may  diminish  his  comforts.  He  may  impede  his 
growth  in  holiness.  He  may  inject  doubts  and  suspicions, 
and  thus  keep  him  disquieted,  when,  if  he  would  live  up  to 
his  privileges,  he  might  rejoice  and  be  peaceful.  But  all 
this — and  we  show  you  here  the  full  sweep  of  the  serpent's 
I  lower — still  leaves  the  man  a  believer;  and,  therefore,  all 
this,  though  it  bruise  the  heel,  touches  not  the  head. 

And  though  the  believer,  like  the  unbeliever,  must  submit 
to  the  power  of  death,  and  tread  the  dark  valley  of  that 
curse  which  still  rests  on  our  nature,  is  there  experienced 
more  than  a  bruising  of  the  heel  in  the  undergoing  this  dis- 
solution of  humanity?  It  is  an  injury — for  we  go  not  with 
those  who  would  idolize,  or  soften  down,  death — that  the 
soul  must  be  detached  from  the  body,  and  sent  out,  a  widow- 
ed thing,  on  the  broad  journeyings  of  eternity.  It  is  an  in- 
jury, that  this  curious  framework  of  matter,  as  much  re- 
deemed by  Christ  as  the  giant-guest  which  it  encases,  must 
be  taken  down,  joint  by  joint,  and  rafter  by  rafter,  and,  re- 
solved into  its  original  elements,  lose  every  trace  of  having 
been  human.  But  what,  we  again  say,  is  the  extent  of  this 
injury?  The  foot  of  the  destroyer  shall  be  set  upon  the  body  ; 
and  he  shall  stamp  till  he  have  ground  it  into  powder,  and 
dispersed  it  to  the  winds.  But  lie  cannot  annihilate  a  lonely 
particle.  He  can  put  no  arrest  on  that  germinating  process 
which  shall  yet  cause  the  vallies  and  mountains  of  this 
globe  to  stand  thick  with  a  harvest  of  flesh.  He  cannot  hin- 
der my  resurrection.  And  when  the  soul,  over  which  he  hath 
had  no  power,  rushes  into  the  body  which  he  shall  be  forced 
to  resign,  and  the  child  of  God  stands  forth,  a  man,  yet  im- 
mortal, compound  of  flesh  and  spirit,  but  each  pure,  each 
indestructible  ;— oh,  though  Satan  may  have  battered  at  his 
peace  during  a  long  earthly  pilgrimage ;  though  he  may 
have  marred  his  happiness  by  successful  temptation  ;  though 
he  may  have  detained  for  centuries  his  body  in  corruption  ; 
will  not  the  inflicted  injury  appear  to  have  been  so  trivial 
and  insignificant,  that  a  bruising  of  the  heel,  in  place  of 


THE    FIRST    TROPIIECY.  31 

falling  short  of  the  matter-of-fact,  shall  itself  seem  almost  an 
overwrought  description  ? 

And,  all  the  while,  though  Satan  can  only  bruise  the  be- 
liever's heel,  the  believer  is  bruising  Satan's  head.  If  the 
believer  be  one  who  fights  the  serpent,  and  finally  conquers, 
by  that  final  conquest  the  serpent's  head  is  bruised.  If  he 
be  naturally  the  slave  of  the  serpent;  if  he  rebel  against  the 
tyrant,  throw  off  his  chains,  and  vanquish  him,  fighting  inch 
by  inch  the  ground  to  freedom  and  glory ;  then  he  bruises 
the  serpent's  head.  If  two  beings  are  antagonists,  he  who 
decisively  overcomes  bruises  the  head  of  his  opponent.  But 
the  believer  and  the  serpent  are  antagonists.  The  believer 
gains  completely  the  mastery  over  the  serpent.  And,  there- 
fore, the  result  of  the  contest  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  predic- 
tion that  the  seed  of  the  woman  shall  bruise  the  head  of  the 
serpent.  Oh,  if,  as  we  well  know,  the  repentance  of  a  single 
sinner  send  a  new  and  exquisite  delight  down  the  ranks  of 
the  hosts  of  heaven,  and  cause  the  sweeping  of  a  rich  and 
glorious  anthem  from  the  countless  harps  of  the  sky,  can  we 
doubt  that  the  same  event  spreads  consternation  through  the 
legions  of  fallen  spirits,  and  strikes,  like  a  death-blow,  on 
their  haughty  and  malignant  leader?  Aye,  and  we  believe 
that  never  is  Satan  so  taught  his  subjugated  estate,  as  when 
a  soul,  which  he  had  counted  as  his  own,  escapes  "  as  a  bird 
out  of  the  snare  of  the  fowlers,"*  and  seeks  and  finds  protec- 
tion in  Jesus.  If  it  be  then  that  Christ  sees  "  of  the  travail  of 
his  soul,"t  it  must  be  then  that  the  serpent  tastes  all  the  bit- 
terness of  defeat.  And  when  the  warfare  is  over,  and  the 
spirit,  which  he  hath  longed  to  destroy,  soars  away,  convoyed 
by  the  angels  which  wait  on  the  heirs  of  salvation,  must  it 
not  be  then  that  the  consciousness  of  lost  mastery  seizes,  with 
crushing  force,  on  the  proud  foe  of  our  race ;  and  does  not 
that  fierce  cry  of  disappointment  which  seems  to  follow  the 
ascending  soul,  causing  her  to  feel  herself  only  "scarcely 
saved,"t  testify  that,  in  thus  winning  a  heritage  of  glory,  the 
believer  hath  bruised  the  head  of  the  serpent  ? 

*  Psalm  121 :  7.  t  Isaiah,  53: 11.  i  \  Peter,  4  :  18. 


32  THE    FIRST    PROPHECY. 

We  shall  not  examine  further  this  third  fulfilment  of  the 
prophecy  of  our  text.  But  we  think  that  when  you  contrast 
the  slight  injury  which  Satan,  at  the  worst,  can  cause  to  a 
believer,  with  the  mighty  blow  which  the  deliverance  of  a 
believer  deals  out  to  Satan  ;  the  nothingness,  at  last,  of  the 
harm  done  to  God's  people,  with  that  fearful  discomfiture 
which  their  individual  rescue  fastens  on  the  devil ;  you  will 
confess,  that,  considering  the  church  as  resolved  into  its  se- 
parate members,  just  as  when  you  survey  it  collectively  as  a 
body,  or  as  represented  by  its  head,  there  is  a  literal  accom- 
plishment of  this  prediction  to  the  serpent  concerning  the 
seed  of  the  woman,  "  it  shall  bruise  thy  head,  and  thou  shalt 
bruise  his  heel." 

We  have  thus,  as  we  trust,  shown  you  that  the  prophecy 
of  our  text  extends  itself  over  the  whole  surface  of  time,  so 
that,  from  the  fall  of  Adam,  it  has  been  receiving  accomplish- 
ment, and  will  continue  being  fulfilled  until  "death  and  hell 
are  cast  into  the  lake  of  fire."*  It  was  a  wonderful  announce- 
ment, and,  if  even  but  imperfectly  understood,  must  have 
confounded  the  serpent,  and  cheered  Adam  and  Eve.  Dust 
shalt  thou  eat,  foe  of  humankind,  when  this  long-oppressed 
creation  is  delivered  from  thy  despotism.  As  though  to 
mark  to  us  that  there  shall  be  no  suspension  of  the  doom  of 
our  destroyer,  whilst  this  earth  rejoices  in  the  restitution  of 
all  things,  Isaiah,  in  describing  millennial  harmony,  still 
leaves  the  serpent  under  the  sentence  of  our  text.  "  The 
wolf  and  the  lamb  shall  feed  together  ;  and  the  lion  shall  eat 
straw  like  the  bullock  ;  and  dust  shall  be  the  serpent's 
rneaV\  There  comes  a  day  of  deliverance  to  every  other 
creature,  but  none  to  the  serpent.  Oh,  mysterious  dealing  of 
our  God !  that  for  fallen  angels  there  hath  been  no  atone- 
ment, for  fallen  men  a  full,  perfect,  and  sufficient.  They 
were  far  nobler  than  we,  of  a  loftier  intelligence  and  more 
splendid  endowment ;  yet  ("  how  unsearchable  are  his  judg- 
ments") we  are  taken  and  they  are  left.  "For  verily  he 
taketh  not  hold  of  angels,  but  of  the  seed  of  Abraham  he 
taketh  hold.'*: 

•  Rev.  00  :  11.        t  Isaiah,.  03  :  25.        t  Hebrews  2 :  10.  marginal  readine. 


THE    FIRST    PROPHECY. 


And  shall  we,  thus  singled  out  and  made  objects  of  mar- 
vellous mercy,  refuse  to  be  delivered,  and  take  our  portion 
with  those  who  are  both  fallen  and  unredeemed  ?  Shall  we 
eat  the  dust,  when  we  may  eat  of  "  the  bread  which  cometh 
down  from  heaven?"*  Covetous  man!  thy  money  is  the 
dust ;  thou  art  eating  the  serpent's  meat.  Sensual  man  ! 
thy  gratifications  are  of  the  dust ;  thou  art  eating  the  ser- 
pent's meat.  Ambitious  man  !  thine  honors  are  of  the  dust ; 
thou  art  eating  the  serpent's  meat.  O  God,  put  enmity  be- 
tween us  and  the  serpent.  Will  ye,  every  one  of  you,  use 
that  short  prayer  ere  ye  lie  down  to  rest  this  night,  O  God, 
put  enmity  between  us  and  the  serpent  ?  If  ye  are  not  at  en- 
mity, his  folds  are  round  your  limbs.  If  ye  are- not  at  en- 
mity, his  sting  is  at  your  heart.  But  if  ye  will,  hencefor- 
ward, count  him  a  foe,  oppose  him  in  God's  strength,  and 
attack  him  with  "  the  sword  of  the  Spirit  ;"t  then,  though  ye 
may  have  your  seasons  of  disaster  and  depression,  the  pro- 
mise stands  sure  that  ye  shall  finally  overcome  ;  and  it  shall 
be  proved  by  each  one  in  this  assembly,  that,  though  the  ser- 
pent may  bruise  the  heel  of  the  seed  of  the  woman,  yet,  at 
last,  the  seed  of  the  woman  always  bruises  the  head  of  the 
serpent. 

*  John,  6  :  50.  t  Ephesians,  6 :  17. 


SERMON    II. 


CHRIST  THE  MINISTER  OF  THE  CHURCH. 


-A  minister  of  the  sanctuary,  and  of  the  true  tabernacle  which  the  Lord 
pitched,  and  not  man."— Hebrews,  8 :  2. 

The  discourse  of  the  Apostle  here  turns  on  Jesus,  the 
high  priest  of  our  profession,  whose  superiority  to  Aaron  and 
his  descendants  he  had  established  by  most  powerful  reason- 
ing. In  the  verse  preceding  our  text  he  takes  a  summary  of 
the  results  of  his  argument,  deciding  that  we  have  such  an 
hio-h  priest  as  became  us,  and  who  had  passed  from  the 
scene  of  earthly  ministrations  to  "  the  throne  of  the  majesty 
in  the  heavens/'  He  then,  in  the  words  upon  which  we  are 
to  meditate,  gives  a  description  of  this  high  priest  as  at  pre- 
sent discharging  sacerdotal  functions.  He  calls  him  "  a  mi- 
nister of  the  sanctuary,  or  (according  to  the  marginal  read- 
ing) of  holy  things,  and  of  the  true  tabernacle  which  the 
Lord  pitched,  and  not  man."  We  think  it  needful,  if  we 
would  enter  into  the  meaning  of  this  passage,  that  we  con- 
fine it  to  what  Christ  is,  and  attempt  not  to  extend  it  to  what 
Christ  was.  If  you  examine  the  verses  which  follow,  you 
will  be  quite  satisfied  that  St.  Paul  had  in  view  those  por- 
tions of  the  mediatorial  work  which  are  yet  being  executed, 
and  not  those,  which  were  completed  upon  earth.  He  ex- 
pressly declares  that  if  the  Redeemer  were  yet  resident 
amongst  men,  he  would  not  be  invested  with  the  priestly 
office— thus  intimating,  and  that  not  obscurely,  that  the 
priesthood  now  enacted  in  heaven  was  that  on  which  he 
wished  to  centre  attention. 

We  know  indeed  that  parts  of  the  priestly  office,  most  stu- 
pendous and  most  important,  were  discharged  by   Jesus 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  6b 

whilst  sojourning  on  earth.  Then  it  was  that,  uniting  mys- 
teriously in  his  person  the  offerer  and  the  victim,  he  pre- 
sented himself,  a  whole  burnt  sacrifice,  to  God,  and  took 
away,  by  his  one  oblation,  the  sin  of  an  overburdened  world. 
But  if  you  attend  closely  to  the  reasoning  of  St.  Paul,  you 
will  observe  that  he  considers  Christ's  oblation  of  himself  as 
a  preparation  for  the  priestly  office,  rather  than  as  an  act  of 
that  office.  He  argues,  in  the  third  verse,  that  since  "  every 
high  priest  is  ordained  to  offer  gifts  and  sacrifices,"  there  was 
a  "  necessity  that  this  man  have  somewhat  also  to  offer." 
And  by  then  speaking  of  Christ's  having  obtained  "  a  more 
excellent  ministry,"  he  plainly  implies  that  what  he  offers  as 
high  priest  is  offered  in  heaven,  and  must,  therefore,  have 
been  rather  procured,  than  presented,  by  the  sacrifice  of 
himself. 

We  are  anxious  that  you  should  clearly  perceive — as  we 
are  sure  you  must  from  the  study  of  the  context — that  Christ 
in  heaven,  and  not  Christ  on  earth,  is  sketched  out  by  the 
words  which  we  are  now  to  examine.  The  right  interpreta- 
tion of  the  description  will  depend  greatly  on  our  ascertain- 
ing the  scene  of  ministrations.  And  we  shall  not  hesitate, 
throughout  the  whole  of  our  discourse,  to  consider  the  apos- 
tle as  referring  to  what  Christ  now  performs  on  our  behalf; 
taking  no  other  account  of  what  he  did  in  his  humiliation 
than  as  it  stands  associated  with  what  he  does  in  his  ex- 
altation. 

You  will  observe,  at  once,  that  the  difficulty  of  our  text 
lies  in  the  assertion,  that  Christ  is  "  a  minister  of  the  true 
tabernacle,  which  the  Lord  pitched,  and  not  man."  Our 
main  business,  as  expounders  of  Scripture,  is  with  the  deter- 
mining what  this  "true  tabernacle"  is.  For,  though  we 
think  it  ascertained  that  heaven  is  the  scene  of  Christ's 
priestly  ministrations,  this  does  not  define  what  the  taber- 
nacle is  wherein  he  ministers. 

Now  there  can  be  but  little  question,  that,  in  another  pas- 
sage of  this  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  the  humanity  of  the  Son 
of  God  is  described  as  "  a  tabernacle,  not  made  with  hands." 
The  verse  occurs  in  the  ninth  chapter,  in  whicli  St.  Paul 


3G  CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH. 

shows  the  temporary  character  of  the  Jewish  tabernacle, 
every  thing  about  it  having  been  simply  "  a  figure  for  the 
time  then  present."  Advancing  to  the  contrast  of  what  was 
enduring  with  what  was  transient,  he  declares  that  Christ 
had  come,  "  an  high  priest  of  good  things  to  come,  by  a 
oreater  and  more  perfect  tabernacle,  not  made  with  hands, 
that  is  to  say,  not  of  this  building."*  It  scarcely  admits  of 
debate  that  the  body  of  the  Redeemer,  produced  as  it  was  by 
a  supernatural  operation,  constituted  this  tabernacle  in  which 
he  came  down  to  earth.  And  we  are  rightly  anxious  to  up- 
hold this,  which  seems  the  legitimate  interpretation,  because 
heretics,  who  would  bring  down  the  Savior  to  a  level  with 
ourselves,  find  the  greatest  difficulty  in  getting  rid  of  the 
miraculous  conception,  and  are  most  perplexed  by  any  pas- 
sage which  speaks  of  Christ  as  superhumanly  generated.  It 
is  a  common  taunt  with  the  Socinian,  that  the  apostles  seem 
to  have  known  nothing  of  this  miraculous  conception,  and 
that  a  truth, of  such  importance,  if  well  ascertained,  would 
not  have  been  omitted  in  their  discussions  with  unbelievers. 
We  might,  if  it  consisted  with  our  subject,  advance  many 
reasons  to  prove  it  most  improbable,  that,  either  in  arguing 
with  gainsayers,  or  in  building  up  believers,  the  first  preach- 
ers of  Christianity  would  make  frequent  use  of  the  mystery 
of  Christ's  generation.  Bat,  at  all  events,  we  contend  that 
one  decisive  mention  is  of  the  same  worth  as  many,  and  that 
a  single  instance  of  apostolic  recognition  of  the  fact  suffices 
for  the  overthrow  of  the  heretical  objection.  And,  therefore, 
we  would  battle  strenuously  for  the  interpretation  of  the 
passage  to  which  we  have  referred,  defining  the  humanity 
of  the  Savior  as  a  "  Tabernacle  not  made  with  hands,  that, 
is  to  say,  not  of  this  building."  And  if,  without  any  over- 
straining of  the  text,  it  should  appear  that  "  the  true  taber- 
nacle," whereof  Christ  is  the  minister,  may  also  be  expound- 
ed of  his  spotless  humanity,  we  should  gladly  adopt  the  in- 
terpretation as  sustaining  us  in  our  contest  with  impugners 
of  his  divinity. 

There  is,  at  first  sight,  so  much  resemblance  between  the 
*  Hebrews,  !)  :  11. 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  3/ 

passages,  that  we  are  naturally  inclined  to  claim  for  them  a 
sameness  of  meaning-.  In  the  one,  the  tabernacle -is  described 
as  that  "  which  the  Lord  pitched  and  not  man  ;"  in  the  other, 
as  "  not  made  with  hands,"  that  is  to  say,  "  not  of  this  build- 
ing." It  is  scarcely  possible  that  the  coincidence  could  be 
more  literal ;  and  the  inference  seems  obvious,  that,  the  lat- 
ter tabernacle  being  Christ's  humanity,  so  also  must  be  the 
former.  Yet  a  little  reflection  will  suggest  that,  however  cor- 
rect the  expression,  that  Christ's  humanity  was  the  taber- 
nacle by,  or  in,  which  he  came,  there  would  be  much  of 
harshness  in  the  figure,  that  this  humanity  is  the  tabernacle 
of  which  he  is  the  minister.  Without  doubt,  it  is  in  his  hu- 
man nature  that  the  Son  of  God  officiates  above.  He  carried 
up  into  glory  the  vehicle  of  his  sufferings,  and  made  it  par- 
taker of  his  triumphs.  And  our  grand  comfort  in  the  priest- 
hood of  Jesus  results  from  the  fact  that  he  ministers  as  a 
man  ;  nothing  else  affording  ground  of  assurance  that  "  we 
have  not  an  high  priest  which  cannot  be  touched  with  the 
feeling  of  our  infirmities."*  But  whilst  certain,  and  rejoicing 
in  the  certainty,  that  our  intercessor  pleads  in  the  humanity, 
which,  undefiled  by  either  actual  or  original  sin,  qualified 
him  to  receive  the  outpourings  of  wrath,  Ave  could  not,  with 
any  accuracy,  say  that  he  is  the  minister  of  this  humanity. 
It  is  clear  that  such  expression  must  define,  in  some  way,  the 
place  of  ministration.  And  since  humanity  was  essential  to 
the  constitution  of  Christ's  person,  we  see  not  how  it  could 
be  the  temple  of  which  he  was  appointed  the  minister.  At 
least  we  must  allow,  that,  in  interpreting  our  text  of  the  hu- 
man nature  of  the  Son  of  God,  we  should  lie  open  to  the 
charge  of  advocating  an  unnatural  meaning,  and  of  being  so 
bent  on  upholding  a  favorite  hypothesis,  as  not  to  be  over- 
scrupulous as  to  means  of  support. 

We  dismiss,  therefore,  as  untenable,  the  opinion  which 
our  wishes  would  have  led  us  to  espouse,  and  must  seek 
elsewhere  than  in  the  humanity  of  Christ  for  "  the  true  ta- 
bernacle which  the  Lord  pitched,  and  not  man."    The  most 

*  Hebrews,  4:13, 


33  CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH. 

correct  and  simple  idea  appears  to  be,  that,  inasmuch  as 
Christ  is  the  high  priest  of  all  who  believe  upon  his  name, 
and  inasmuch  as  believers  make  up  his  church,  the  whole 
company  of  the  faithful  constitute  that  tabernacle  of  which 
he  is  here  asserted  the  minister.  If  we  adopt  this  interpreta- 
tion, we  may  trace  a  fitness  and  accuracy  of  expression 
which  can  scarcely  fail  to  assure  us  of  its  justice.  The  Jew- 
ish tabernacle,  unquestionably  typical  of  the  christian  church, 
consisted  of  the  outer  part  and  the  inner  ;  the  one  open  to 
the  ministrations  of  inferior  priests,  the  other  to  those  of  the 
high  priest  alone.  Thus  the  church,  always  one  body,  what- 
ever the  dispersion  of  its  members,  is  partly  upon  earth  where 
Christ's  ambassadors  officiate,  partly  in  heaven  where  Christ 
himself  is  present.  St.  Paul,  referring  to  this  church  as  a 
household,  describes  Christ  Jesus  as  him  "  of  whom  the 
whole  family  in  heaven  and  earth  is  named  ;"*  intimating 
that  it  was  no  interference  with  the  unity  of  this  family,  that 
some  of  its  members  resided  above,  whilst  others  remained, 
as  warriors  and  sufferers,  below.  So  that,  in  considering 
Christ's  church  as  the  tabernacle  with  its  holy  place,  and  its 
holy  of  holies — the  first  on  earth,  the  second  in  heaven — Ave 
adhere  most  rigidly  to  the  type,  and,  at  the  same  time,  pre- 
serve harmony  with  other  representations  of  Scripture. 

And  when  you  remember  that  Christ  is  continually  de- 
scribed as  dwelling  in  his  people,  and  that  believers  are 
represented  as  "  builded  together  for  an  habitation  of  God 
through  the  Spirit,"!  there  will  seem  to  be  none  of  that  ob- 
jection against  this  interpretation  which  we  felt  constrained 
to  urge  against  the  former.  If  it  be  common  to  represent  be- 
lievers, whether  singly  or  collectively,  as  the  temple  of  God  ; 
and  if,  at  the  same  time,  Christ  Jesus,  as  the  high  priest  of 
our  profession,  preside  at  the  altar,  and  hold  the  censor  of 
this  temple ;  then  we  suppose  nothing  far-fetched,  we  only 
keep  up  the  imagery  of  Scripture,  when  we  take  the  church 
as  that  "  true  tabernacle  "  whereof  the  Redeemer  is  the  mi- 
nister. 

And  when  we  yet  further  call  to  mind  that  to  God  alone 

*  Ephesians,  ">  :  15.  t  Ibid.  2  :  22. 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  39 

is  the  conversion  of  man  ascribed  throughout  Scripture,  we 
see,  at  once,  the  truth  of  the  account  given  of  this  taber- 
nacle, that  the  Lord  pitched  it  and  not  man.  Man  reared 
the  Jewish  tabernacle,  and  man  builded  the  Jewish  temple. 
But  the  spiritual  sanctuary,  of  which  these  were  but  types 
and  figures,  could  be  constructed  by  no  human  architect.  A 
finite  power  is  inadequate  to  the  fashioning  and  collecting 
living  stones,  and  to  the  weaving  the  drapery  of  self-denial 
and  obedience.  We  refer,  undividedly,  to  Deity,  the  con- 
struction of  this  true  tabernacle,  the  church.  Had  there  been 
no  mediatorial  interference,  the  spiritual  temple  could  never 
have  been  erected.  In  the  work  and  person  of  Christ  were 
laid  the  foundation  of  this  temple.  "  Behold,  saith  God,  I 
lay  in  Zion  for  a  foundation  a  stone,  a  tried  stone."*  And 
on  the  stone  thus  laid  there  would  have  arisen  no  super- 
structure, had  not  the  finished  work  of  redemption  been 
savingly  applied,  by  God's  Spirit,  to  man's  conscience. 
Though  redeemed,  not  a  solitary  individual  would  go  on  to 
be  saved,  unless  God  recreated  him  after  his  own  likeness. 
So  that,  whatever  the  breadth  which  we  give  to  the  expres- 
sion, it  must  hold  good  of  Christ's  church,  that  the  Lord 
pitched  it  and  not  man.  And  it  is  not  more  true  of  Christ's 
humanity,  mysteriously  and  supernaturally  produced,  that 
it  was  a  tabernacle  which  Deity  reared,  than  of  the  company 
of  believers,  born  again  of  the  Spirit  and  renewed  after  God's 
image,  that  they  constitute  a  sanctuary  which  shows  a  no- 
bler than  mortal  workmanship. 

Now,  upon  the  grounds  thus  briefly  adduced,  we  shall 
consider,  through  the  remainder  of  our  discourse,  that  "the 
true  tabernacle,"  whereof  Christ  is  the  minister,  denotes  the 
whole  church,  whether  in  earth  or  heaven,  of  the  redeemed, 
made  one  by  union,  through  faith,  with  the  Redeemer.  But 
before  considering,  at  greater  length,  the  senses  in  which 
Christ  is  the  minister  of  this  tabernacle,  we  would  remark 
on  his  being  styled  "  Minister,"  and  not  "  High  Priest."  We 
shall  find,  in  the  sequel,  that  this  change  of  title  is  too  im- 

*  Isaiah,  28  :  16. 


40  CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH. 

portant  to  be  overlooked,  and  that  we  must  give  it  our  atten- 
tion, if  we  would  bring  out  the  full  meaning  of  the  passage. 
The  word  translated  "  minister,"  denotes  properly  any  pub- 
lic servant,  whatever  the  duties  committed  to  his  care.  His 
office,  or  his  ministry,  is  any  business  undertaken  for  the 
sake  of  the  commonwealth.  Hence,  in  the  New  Testament, 
the  word  rendered  "ministry"  is  transferred  to  the  public 
office  of  the  Levites  and  Priests,  and  afterwards  to  the  sacer- 
dotal office  of  Christ.  We  keep  the  Greek  word  in  our  own 
language,  but  confine  it  to  the  business  of  the  sanctuary,  de- 
scribing as  "  a  Liturgy"  a  formulary  of  public  devotions. 
When  Christ,  therefore,  is  called  the  minister  of  the  taber- 
nacle, a  broader  office  seems  assigned  him  than  when  styled 
the  High  Priest.  As  the  High  Priest  of  his  church,  he  is 
alone  ;  the  functions  of  the  office  being  such  as  himself  only 
can  discharge.  But  as  the  minister  of  his  church,  he  is  in- 
deed supreme,  but  not  alone  ;  the  same  title  being  given  to 
his  ambassadors;  as  when  St.  Paul  describes  himself  as  the 
':  minister  of  Jesus  Christ  to  the  Gentiles,  ministering  the 
Gospel  of  God.*  You  will  perceive,  at  once,  from  this  state- 
ment, that  our  text  ought  not  to  be  expounded  as  though 
"  Minister "  and  "  High  Priest "  were  identical  titles.  No 
force  is  then  attached  to  a  word,  of  whose  application  to 
Christ  this  verse  is  the  solitary  instance.  Indeed  we  are  per- 
suaded that  much  of  the  power  and  beauty  of  the  passage 
lies  in  the  circumstance,  that  Christ  is  called  "  the  Minister 
of  the  true  tabernacle,"  and  not  the  High  Priest.  If "  the 
true  tabernacle "  be,  as  we  seem  to  have  ascertained,  the 
whole  church  of  the  redeemed,  that  part  of  the  church  which 
is  already  in  glory  appears  to  have  no  need  of  Christ  as  a 
priest ;  and  we  may  search  in  vain  for  the  senses  which  the 
passage  would  bear,  when  applied  to  this  part.  But  if  Christ's 
priestly  functions,  properly  so  called,  relate  not  to  the  church 
in  heaven,  it  is  altogether  possible  that  his  ministerial  may : 
so  that  there  is,  perhaps,  a  propriety  in  calling  him  the  mi- 
nister of  that  church,  which  there  would  not  be  in  calling 
him  the  High  Priest. 

*  Romans,  15  :  l(i. 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  11 

We  shall  proceed,  therefore,  to  explain  our  text  on  the  two 
assumptions,  for  each  of  which  we  have  shown  you  a  reason. 
We  assume,  in  the  first  place,  that  "the  true  tabernacle"  is 
the  collective  church  of  the  redeemed,  whether  in  earth  or 
heaven  :  in  the  second,  that  the  office  of  minister,  though  in- 
cluding that  of  high  priest,  has  duties  attached  to  it  which 
belong  specially  to  itself.  These  points,  you  observe,  we  as- 
sume, or  take  for  granted,  through  the  remainder  of  our  dis- 
course ;  and  we  wish  them,  therefore,  borne  in  mind  as  as- 
certained truths. 

In  strict  conformity  with  these  assumptions,  we  shall  now 
speak  to  you,  in  the  first  place,  of  Christ  as  minister  of  the 
church  on  earth  ;  in  the  second  place,  of  Christ  as  minister 
of  the  church  in  heaven. 

Now  it  is  of  first-rate  importance  that  we  consider  Christ 
as  withdrawn  only  from  the  eye  of  sense,  and,  therefore,  pre- 
sent as  truly,  after  a  spiritual  manner,  with  his  church,  as 
when,  in  the  day  of  humiliation,  he  moved  visibly  upon 
earth.  The  lapse  of  time  has  brought  no  interruption  of  his 
parting  promise  to  the  apostles,  "  Lo,  I  am  with  you  alway, 
even  unto  the  end  of  the  world."*  He  has  provided,  by  keep- 
ing up  a  succession  of  men  who  derive  authority,  in  unbroken 
series,  from  the  first  teachers  of  the  faith,  for  the  continued 
preaching  of  his  word,  and  administration  of  his  sacraments. 
And  thus  he  hath  been,  all  along,  the  great  minister  of  his 
church  :  delegating,  indeed,  power  to  inferior  ministers  who 
"  have  the  treasure  in  earthen  vessels  ;"*  but  superintending 
their  appointments  as  the  universal  bishop,  and  evangelizing, 
so  to  speak,  his  vast  diocese,  through  their  instrumentality. 
We  contend  that  you  have  no  true  idea  of  a  church,  unless 
you  thus  recognize  in  its  ordinances,  not  merely  the  institu- 
tion of  Christ,  but  his  actual  and  energizing  presence.  You 
have  no  right,  when  you  sit  down  in  the  sanctuary,  to  re- 
gard the  individual  who  addresses  you  as  a  mere  public 
speaker,  delivering  an  harangue  which  has  precisely  so 
much  worth  as  it  may  draw  from  its  logic  and  its  language. 

*  Matthew,  28  :  20.  1 2  Corinthians,  4  :  7. 


42  CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH. 

He  is  an  ambassador  from  the  great  Head  of  the  church,  and 
derives  an  authority  from  this  Head  which  is  quite  inde- 
pendent of  his  own  worthiness.  If  Christ  remain  always  the 
minister  of  his  church,  Christ  is  to  be  looked  at  through  his 
ministering  servant,  whoever  shall  visibly  officiate.  And 
though  there  be  a  great  deal  preached  in  which  you  cannot 
recognize  the  voice  of  the  Savior ;  and  though  the  sacraments 
be  administered  by  hands  which  seem  impure  enough  to  sul- 
ly their  sanctity  ;  yet  do  we  venture  to  assert,  that  no  man, 
who  keeps  Christ  stedfastly  in  view  as  the  "  minister  of  the 
true  tabernacle,"  will  ever  fail  to  derive  profit  from  a  sermon, 
and  strength  from  a  communion.  The  grand  evil  is  that  men 
ordinarily  lose  the  chief  minister  in  the  inferior,  and  deter- 
mine beforehand  that  they  cannot  be  advantaged,  unless  the 
inferior  be  modelled  exactly  to  their  own  pattern.  They  re- 
gard the  speaker  simply  as  a  man,  and  not  at  all  as  a  mes- 
senger. Yet  the  ordained  preacher  is  a  messenger,  a  messen- 
ger from  the  God  of  the  whole  earth.  His  mental  capacity 
may  be  weak — that  is  nothing.  His  speech  may  be  contemp- 
tible— that  is  nothing.  His  knowledge  may  be  circumscrib- 
ed— we  say  not,  that  is  nothing.  But  we  say  that,  whatever 
the  man's  qualifications,  he  should  rest  upon  his  office.  And 
we  hold  it  the  business  of  a  congregation,  if  they  hope  to 
find  profit  in  the  public  duties  of  the  Sabbath,  to  cast  away 
those  personal  considerations  which  may  have  to  do  with 
the  officiating  individual,  and  to  fix  stedfastly  their  thoughts 
on  the  office  itself.  Whoever  preaches,  a  congregation  would 
be  profited,  if  they  sat  down  in  the  temper  of  Cornelius  and 
his  friends,  "  now  therefore  are  we  all  here  present  before 
God,  to  hear  all  things  that  are  commanded  thee  of  God."* 
But  if  a  sermon  differ  from  what  a  Gospel  sermon  should 
be,  men  will  determine  that  Christ  could  have  had  nothing 
to  do  with  its  delivery.  Now  this,  we  assert,  is  nothing  less 
than  the  deposing  Christ  from  the  ministry  assigned  him  by 
our  text.  We  are  far  enough  from  declaring  that  the  chief 
minister  puts  the  false  words  into  the  mouth  of  the  inferior. 

*Acts,  10  :  33. 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  43 

But  we  are  certain,  as  upon  a  truth  which  to  deny  is  to  as- 
sault the  foundations  of  Christianity,  that  the  chief  minister 
is  so  mindful  of  his  office  that  every  man,  who  listens  in 
faith,  expecting  a  message  from  above,  shall  be  addressed 
through  the  mouth,  aye,  even  through  the  mistakes  and 
errors,  of  the  inferior.  And  in  upholding  this  truth,  a  truth 
attested  by  the  experience  of  numbers,  we  simply  contend 
for  the  accuracy  of  that  description  of  Christ  which  is  under 
review.  If,  wheresoever  the  minister  is  himself  deficient  and 
untaught,  so  that  his  sermons  exhibit  a  wrong  system  of 
doctrine,  you  will  not  allow  that  Christ's  church  may  be 
profited  by  the  ordinance  of  preaching ;  you  clearly  argue 
that  the  Redeemer  has  given  up  his  office,  and  that  he  can 
no  longer  be  styled  the  "  minister  of  the  true  tabernacle." 
There  is  no  middle  course  between  denying  that  Christ  is 
the  minister,  and  allowing  that,  whatever  the  faulty  state- 
ments of  his  ordained  servant,  no  soul,  which  is  hearkening 
in  faith  for  a  word  of  counsel  or  comfort,  shall  find  the  ordi- 
nance worthless  and  be  sent  away  empty. 

And  from  this  we  obtain  our  first  illustration  of  our  text. 
We  behold  the  true  followers  of  Christ  enabled  to  find  food 
in  pastures  which  seem  barren,  and  water  where  the  foun- 
tains are  dry.  They  obtain  indeed  the  most  copious  sup- 
plies— though,  perhaps,  even  this  will  not  always  hold 
good — when  the  sermons  breathe  nothing  but  truth,  and  the 
sacraments  are  administered  by  men  of  tried  piety  and 
faith.  But  when  every  thing  seems  against  them,  so  that, 
on  a  carnal  calculation,  you  would  suppose  the  services  of 
the  church  stripped  of  all  efficacy,  then,  by  acting  faith  on 
the  head  of  the  ministry,  they  are  instructed  and  nourished  ; 
though,  in  the  main,  the  given  lesson  be  falsehood,  and  the 
proffered  sustenance,  little  better  than  poison.  And  if  Christ 
be  thus  always  sending  messages  to  those  who  listen  for  his 
voice  ;  if  he  so  take  upon  himself  the  office  of  preacher  as  to 
constrain  even  the  tongue  of  error  to  speak  instruction  to  his 
people  ;  and  if,  over  and  above  this  conveyance  of  lessons 
by  the  most  unpromising  vehicle,  he  be  dispensing  abund- 
antly, by  his  faithful  ambassadors,  the  rich  nutriment  of 


44  CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH. 

sound  and  heavenly  doctrine — every  sermon,  which  speaks 
truth  to  the  heart,  being-  virtually  a  homily  of  Christ  deliv- 
ered by  himself,  and  every  sacrament,  which  transmits  grace, 
an  ordinance  of  Christ  superintended  by  himself — why,  a 
fidelity  the  most  extraordinary  must  be  allowed  to  distinguish 
the  description  of  our  text ;  and  Christ,  though  removed 
from  visible  ministration,  has  yet  so  close  a  concernment 
with  all  the  business  of  the  sanctuary — uttering  the  word, 
sprinkling  the  water,  and  breaking  the  bread,  to  all  the  mem- 
bers of  his  mystical  body— that  he  must  emphatically  be 
styled,  "  a  minister  of  holy  things,  of  the  true  tabernacle 
which  the  Lord  pitched,  and  not  man." 

But  whilst  the  office  of  minister  thus  includes  duties  whose 
scene  of  performance  is  the  holy  place,  there  are  others  which 
can  only  be  discharged  in  the  holy  of  holies.  These  apper- 
tain to  Christ  under  his  character  of  High  Priest ;  no  inferior 
minister  being  privileged  to  enter  "  within  the  veil."  You 
must,  we  think,  be  familiar,  through  frequent  hearing,  with 
the  offices  of  Christ  as  our  Intercessor.  You  know  that 
though  he  suffered  but  once,  in  the  last  ages  of  the  world, 
yet,  ever  living  to  plead  the  merits  of  his  sacrifice,  he  gives 
perpetuity  to  the  oblation,  and  applies  to  the  washing  away 
of  sin  that  blood  which  is  as  expiatory  as  in  its  first  warm 
gushings.  In  no  respect  is  it  more  sublimely  true  than  in 
this,  that  Jesus  Christ  is  "  the  same  yesterday,  and  to-day, 
and  for  ever."  The  high  priests  of  Aaron's  line  entered, 
year  by  year,  into  the  holiest  of  all,  making  continually  a 
new  atonement  "  for  themselves  and  for  the  errors  of  the 
people."*  But  he  who  was  constituted  "  after  the  order  of 
Melchisedec,"  king  as  well  as  priest,  entered  in  once,  not "  by 
the  blood  of  goats  and  calves,  but  by  his  own  blood,"t  and 
needed  never  to  return  and  ascend  again  the  altar  of  sacri- 
fice. It  is  not  that  sin  can  now  be  taken  away  by  any  thing 
short  of  shedding  of  blood.  But  intercession  perpetuates 
crucifixion.  Christ,  as  high  priest  within  the  veil,  so  im- 
mortalizes Calvary  that,  though  "  he  liveth  unto  God,"  he 

*  Hebrews,  9:7.  t  Ibid.  12. 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  45 

dies  continually  unto  sin.  And  thus,  "  if  any  man  sin,  we 
have,  saith  St.  John,  an  advocate  with  the  Father."*  But  of 
what  nature  is  his  advocacy  ?  If  you  would  understand  it, 
you  must  take  the  survey  of  his  atonement.  It  was  a  mighty 
exploit  which  the  Mediator  effected  in  the  days  of  humilia- 
tion. He  arose  in  the  strength  of  that  wondrous  coalition 
of  Deity  and  humanity  of  which  his  person  was  the  subject ; 
and  he  took  into  his  grasp  the  globe  over  whose  provinces 
Satan  expatiated  as  his  rightful  territory  ;  and,  by  one  vast 
impulse,  he  threw  it  back  into  the  galaxy  of  Jehovah's  fa- 
vor ;  and  angel,  and  archangel,  cherubim  and  seraphim, 
sang  the  chorus  of  triumph  at  the  stupendous  achievement. 
Now  it  is  of  this  achievement  that  intercession  perpetuates 
the  results.  We  wish  you  to  understand  thoroughly  the 
nature  of  Christ's  intercession.  When  Rome  had  thrown 
from  her  the  warrior  who  had  led  his  countrymen  to  vic- 
tory, and  galled  and  fretted  the  proud  spirit  of  her  boldest 
hero  ;  he,  driven  onward  by  the  demon  of  revenge,  gave 
himself  as  a  leader  where  he  had  before  been  a  conqueror, 
and,  taking  a  hostile  banner  into  his  passionate  grasp,  headed 
the  foes  who  sought  to  subjugate  the  land  of  his  nativity.  Ye 
remember,  it  may  be,  how  intercession  saved  the  city.  The 
mother  bowed  before  the  son  ;  and  Coriolanus,  vanquished 
by  tears,  subdued  by  plaints,  left  the  capitol  unscathed  by 
battle.  Here  is  a  precise  instance  of  what  men  count  suc- 
cessful intercession.  But  there  is  no  analogy  between  this 
intercession,  and  the  intercession  of  Christ.  Christ  inter- 
cedes with  justice.  But  the  intercession  is  the  throwing 
down  his  cross  on  the  crystal  floor  of  heaven,  and  thus 
proffering  his  atonement  to  satisfy  the  demand.  Oh,  it  is 
not  the  intercession  of  burning  tears,  nor  of  half-choked  ut- 
terance, nor  of  thrilling  speech.  It  is  the  intercession  of  a 
broken  body,  and  of  gushing  blood — of  death,  of  passion,  of 
obedience.  It  is  the  intercession  of  a  giant  leaping  into  the 
gap,  and  filling  it  with  his  colossal  stature,  and  covering,  as 
with  a  rampart  of  flesh,  the  defenceless  camp  of  the  outcasts. 

♦St.  John,  2:1. 


4G  CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH. 

So  that,  not  by  the  touching  words  and  gestures  of  supplica- 
tion, but  by  the  resistless  deeds  and  victories  of  Calvary,  the 
Captain  of  our  salvation  intercedes  :  pleading,  not  as  a  peti- 
tioner who  would  move  compassion,  but  rather  as  a  con- 
queror who  would  claim  his  trophies. 

Hence  Christ  is  "  able  to  save  to  the  uttermost,''  on  the 
very  ground  that  "  he  ever  liveth  to  make  intercession  ;"* 
seeing  that  no  sin  can  be  committed  for  which  the  satisfac- 
tion, made  upon  Calvary,  proffers  not  an  immediate  and 
thorough  expiation.  And  if,  as  the  intercessor,  or  advocate, 
of  his  people,  Christ  Jesus  may  be  said  to  stand  continually 
at  the  altar-side  ;  and  if  he  be  momentarily  offering  up  the 
sacrifice  which  is  momentarily  required  by  their  fast-recur- 
ring guilt ;  is  he  not  most  truly  a  minister  of  the  tabernacle  ? 
If,  though  the  shadows  of  Jewish  worship  have  been  swept 
away,  so  that,  day  by  day,  and  year  by  year,  a  typical  atone- 
ment is  no  longer  to  be  made,  the  constant  commission  of  sin 
demand,  as  it  must  demand,  the  constant  pouring  out  of 
blood  ;  and  if,  standing  not  indeed  in  a  material  court,  and 
offering  not  the  legal  victims,  but,  nevertheless,  officiating  in 
the  presence  of  God,  "  a  lamb  as  it  had  been  slain,"t  the 
Redeemer  present  the  oblation  prescribed  for  every  offence 
and  every  short-coming ;  is  not  the  whole  business  of  the 
tabernacle  which  man  pitched  transacted  over  again,  and 
that  too  every  instant,  in  the  tabernacle  which  God  pitched  ; 
and,  Christ  being  the  high  priest  who  alone  presides  over 
this  expiatory  process,  how  otherwise  shall  we  describe  him 
than  as  the  "  minister  of  the  sanctuary,  and  of  the  true  ta- 
bernacle which  the  Lord  pitched,  and  not  man  ?" 

But  once  more.  We  may  regard  the  prayers  and  praises 
of  real  believers  as  incense  burnt  in  the  true  tabernacle,  and 
rising  in  fragrant  clouds  towards  heaven.  Yet  who  knows 
not  that  this  incense,  though  it  be  indeed  nothing  less  than 
the  breathings  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  is  so  defiled  by  the  corrupt 
channel  of  humanity  through  which  it  passes,  that,  unless 
purified  and  etherialized,  it  can  never  be  accepted  of  God? 

*  1  [ebrews,  7  :  25.  t  Revelations,  5  :  G. 


CHRIST   THE    .MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  47 

The  Holy  Ghost,  as  well  as  Christ  Jesus,  is  said  to  make  in- 
tercession for  us.  But  these  intercessions  are  of  a  widely 
different  character.  The  Spirit  pleads  not  for  us  as  Christ 
pleads,  holding1  up  a  cross,  and  pointing  to  wounds.  The 
intercession  of  the  Spirit  is  an  intercession  made  within  our- 
selves, and  through  ourselves.  It  is  the  result  of  the  Spirit's 
casting  himself  into  our  breasts,  and  there  praying  for  us  by 
instructing  us  to  pray  for  ourselves.  Thus  real  prayer  is  the 
Spirit's  breath  ;  and  what  else  is  real  praise  ?  Real  praise  is 
the  Spirit's  throwing  the  heart  into  the  tongue  ;  or  rather,  it 
is  the  sound  produced,  when  the  Spirit  has  swept  the  chords 
of  the  soul,  and  there  is  a  correspondent  vibration  of  the  lip. 
But  though  prayer  and  praise  be  thus,  emphatically,  the 
breathings  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  they  ascend  not  up  in  their 
purity,  because  each  of  us  is  compelled  to  exclaim  with 
Isaiah,  "  Wo  is  me,  because  I  am  a  man  of  unclean  lips."* 
Even  the  voice  of  the  interceding  Spirit,  when  proceeding' 
from  that  tongue  which  "  is  a  fire,  a  world  of  iniquity,"! 
penetrates  not  the  holy  of  holies,  unless  the  Intercessor,  who 
is  at  God's  right  hand,  give  it  wings  and  gain  it  access. 
The  atmosphere,  so  to  speak,  which  is  round  the  throne  of 
the  Eternal  One,  must  be  impervious  to  the  incense  burnt  in 
the  earthly  tabernacle,  unless  moist  with  that  mysterious 
dew  which  was  wrung  by  anguish  from  the  Mediator. 

And  how  then  shall  we  better  represent  the  office  which 
the  Intercessor  executes  than  by  saying,  that  he  holds  in  his 
hands  the  censer  of  his  own  merits,  and,  gathering  into  it 
the  prayers  and  praises  of  his  church,  renders  them  a  sweet 
savor  acceptable  to  the  Father?  Perfumed  with  the  odor 
of  Christ's  propitiation,  the  incense  mounts  ;  and  God,  in  his 
condescension,  accepts  the  offering,  and  breathes  benediction 
in  return.  And  what  then,  we  again  ask,  is  Christ  Jesus  but 
the  "  minister  of  the  true  tabernacle  ?"  If  it  be  the  Intercessor 
who  carries  our  prayers  and  praises  within  the  veil,  and, 
laying  them  on  the  glowing  fire  of  his  righteousness,  causes 
a  spicy  cloud  to  ascend  and  cover  the  mercy-seat ;  does  not 

*  Isaiah.  6:5.  t  St.  James,  3  :  6. 


48  CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE     CHURCH. 

this  Intercessor  officiate  in  the  true  tabernacle  as  did  the 
high  priest  of  old  in  the  figurative  ;  and  have  we  not  fresh 
attestation  to  the  truth  of  the  description,  that  Jesus  is  "  a 
minister  of  holy  things,  of  the  true  tabernacle  which  the 
Lord  pitched,  and  not  man  ?" 

We  think  that  the  several  particulars  thus  adduced  con- 
stitute a  strong  witness,  so  far  as  the  church  on  earth  is  con- 
cerned, to  the  accuracy  of  the  definition  presented  by  our 
text.  We  have  shown  you  that  to  all  true  believers  Christ 
Jesus  is  literally  the  minister  of  the  sanctuary,  preaching 
through  the  preacher,  and  administering,  through  his  hands, 
the  sacraments.  And  though  we  may  be  thought  to  have 
herein  somewhat  trenched  on  the  office  of  the  Spirit,  we 
have,  in  no  degree,  transgressed  the  statements  of  Scripture. 
In  the  Book  of  Revelation,  it  is  Christ  who  sends,  through 
John,  the  sermons  to  the  churches,  who  holds  in  his  right 
hand  the  seven  stars  which  represent  the  ministers  of  these 
churches,  and  who  walketh  in  the  midst  of  the  seven  golden 
candlesticks  which  represent  the  churches  themselves.  And 
though,  unquestionably,  it  is  the  Spirit  which  carries  home 
the  word,  the  delivery  of  that  word  must  be  referred  to  the 
Savior.  Thus,  in  a  somewhat  obscure  passage  of  St.  Peter, 
Christ  is  said  to  have  gone  by  the  Spirit,  and  "  preached  unto 
the  spirits  in  prison."*  And  certainly  what  he  did  to  the  dis- 
obedient, he  may  justly  be  affirmed  to  do  to  the  faithful.  We 
have  further  shown  you,  that,  as  the  high  priest  of  his  people, 
Christ  offers  up  continual  sacrifice,  and  burns  sweet  incense. 
And  when  you  combine  these  particulars,  you  have  virtually 
before  you  the  Savior  in  the  pulpit  of  the  sanctuary,  the  Sa- 
vior at  the  altar,  the  Savior  with  the  censer ;  and  thus,  see- 
ing that  he  officiates  in  the  whole  business  of  the  divinely- 
pitched  tabernacle,  will  you  not  confess  him  the  minister  of 
that  tabernacle  ? 

But,  understanding  by  the  "true  tabernacle"  the  collec- 
tive church  of  the  redeemed,  whether  in  heaven  or  on  earth, 
we  have  yet  to  show  you  that  Christ  is  the  minister  of  the 

*  1  St.  Peter,  3  :  19. 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  49 

former  portion  as  well  as  of  the  latter.  You  see,  at  once,  that 
the  "  true  tabernacle "  cannot  be  what  we  have  all  along 
supposed,  unless  there  be  ministerial  offices  discharged  by- 
Christ  towards  the  saints  in  glory.  And  we  think  that  the 
overlooking  the  title  of  minister,  or  rather  the  identifying  it 
with  that  of  high  priest,  has  caused  the  unsatisfactoriness  of 
many  commentaries  on  the  passage.  As  High  Priest  of  the 
spiritual  temple,  Christ  can  scarcely  be  said  to  execute  any 
functions  in  which  those  who  have  entered  into  heaven  are 
personally  interested.  They  are  beyond  the  power  of  sin, 
and  therefore  need  not  sacrifice.  The  music  of  their  praises 
is  rolled  from  celestial  harps,  and  requires  not  to  be  melo- 
dized. But,  when  we  take  Christ  as  the  minister,  we  may 
observe  respects  in  which,  without  adventuring  on  rash  spe- 
culation, he  may  be  said  to  discharge  the  same  offices  to  the 
church  above  and  the  church  below.  We  shall  not  presume 
to  speak  of  what  goes  on  in  the  holy  of  holies,  with  that 
confidence  which  is  altogether  warrantable,  when  discourse 
turns  on  transactions  of  which  the  outer  court  is  the  scene. 
But  finding  Christ  described  as  the  "  minister  of  the  true  ta- 
bernacle," and  considering  this  tabernacle  as  divided  into 
sections,  we  only  strive  to  be  wise  up  to  what  is  written, 
when,  observing  senses  in  which  the  name  must  be  confined 
to  the  lower  section,  we  search  for  others  in  which  it  may  be 
extended  to  the  upper. 

And  if  Christ  minister  to  the  church  below  by  discharging 
the  office  of  preacher  or  instructor,  who  shall  doubt  that  he 
may  also  thus  minister  to  the  church  above  ?  We  have  al- 
ready referred  to  a  passage  in  St.  Peter  which  speaks  of 
Christ  as  having  "  preached  to  the  spirits."  We  enter  not 
into  the  controversies  on  this  passage.  But  it  gives,  we  think, 
something  of  foundation  to  the  opinion,  that,  whilst  his  body 
was  in  the  sepulchre,  Christ  preached  to  spirits  in  the  separate 
state,  opening  up  to  them,  probably,  those  mysteries  of  re- 
demption into  which  even  angels,  before-time,  had  vainly 
striven  to  look.  The  kings,  and  the  prophets,  and  the  righ- 
teous men,  who  had  desired  to  see  the  things  which  apostles 
saw,  and  had  not  seen  them,  and  to  hear  the  things  which 
7 


50  CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    01    THE    CHURCH. 

they  heard,  and  had  not  heard  them— unto  these,  it  may  be, 
Christ  brought  a  glorious  roll  of  intelligence ;  and  we  can 
imagine  him  standing  in  the  midst  of  a  multitude  which  no 
man  can  number,  who  had  all  gone  down  to  the  chambers 
of  death  with  but  indistinct  and  fur-off  glimpses  of  the  pro- 
mised Messiah,  and  explaining  to  the  eager  assembly  the 
beauty,  and  the  stability,  of  that  deliverance  which  he  had 
just  wrought  out  through  obedience  and  blood-shedding. 
And,  O,  there  must  then  have  gone  forth  a  tide  of  the  very 
loftiest  gladness  through  the  listening  crowds  of  the  separate 
state ;  and  then,  perhaps,  for  the  first  time,  admiration  and 
ecstasy  summoning  out  the  music,  was  heard  that  anthem, 
whose  rich  peal  rolls  down  the  coming  eternity,  "  Worthy, 
worthy,  worthy  is  the  Lamb."  Then,  it  may  be,  for  the  first 
time,  did  Adam  embrace  all  the  magnificence  of  the  promise, 
that  the  seed  of  the  woman  should  bruise  the  serpent's  head  ; 
and  Abraham  understand  how  the  well-being  of  the  human 
population  depended  upon  one  that  should  spring  from  his 
own  loins ;  and  David  ascertain  all  the  meaning  of  myste- 
rious strains,  which,  as  prefiguring  Messiah,  he  had  swept 
from  the  harp-strings.  Then,  too,  the  long  train  of  Aaron's 
line,  who  had  stood  at  the  altar,  and  slain  the  victims,  and 
burnt  the  incense,  almost  weighed  down  by  a  ritual,  the  im- 
port of  whose  ceremonies  was  but  indistinctly  made  known 
— then,  it  may  be,  were  they  suddenly  and  sublimely  taught 
the  power  of  every  figure,  and  the  expressiveness  of  every 
rite ;  whilst  the  noble  company  of  prophets,  holy  men  who 
"  spake  as  they  were  moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost,"*  but  who, 
rapt  into  the  future,  uttered  much  which  only  the  future 
could  develope — these,  as  though  starting  from  the  sleep  of 
ages,  sprang  into  the  centre  of  that  gorgeous  panorama  of 
truth  which  they  had  been  commissioned  to  outline,  but 
over  whose  spreadings  there  had  rested  the  cloud  and  the 
mist ;  and  Isaiah  thrilled  at  the  glories  of  his  own  saying, 
"  unto  us  a  child  is  born,  unto  us  a  son  is  given  ;"t  and 
Hosea  grasped  all  the  mightiness  of  the  declaration,  which 

♦  2  St.  Tetcr.  1:21.  t  Isaiah,  9  .6. 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  bl 

he  had  poured  forth  whilst  denouncing  the  apostasies  of  Sa- 
maria, "  O  Deatli,  I  will  be  thy  plagues ;  O  Grave,  I  will  be 
thy  destruction."* 

We  know  not  why  it  may  not  thus  be  considered  that  the 
day  of  Christ's  entrance  into  the  separate  state  was,  like  the 
Pentecostal  day  to  the  church  upon  earth,  a  day  of  the 
rolling  off  of  obscurity  from  the  plan  of  redemption,  and  of 
the  showing  how  "  glory,  honor,  and  immortal ity."t  were 
made  accessible  to  the  remotest  of  the  world's  families  ;  a 
day  on  which  a  thousand  types  gave  place  to  realities,  and 
a  thousand  predictions  leaped  into  fulfillment ;  a  day,  there- 
fore, on  which  there  circulated  through  the  enormous  gath- 
erings of  Adam  and  his  elect  posterity,  already  ushered  into 
rest,  a  gladness  which  had  never  yet  been  reached  in  all  the 
depth  of  their  beatifical  repose.  And  neither,  then,  can  we 
discover  cause  why  Christ  may  not  be  thought  to  have  filled 
the  office  of  preacher  to  the  buried  tribes  of  the  righteous, 
and  thus  to  have  assumed  that  character  which  he  has  never 
since  laid  aside,  that  of  "  a  minister  of  the  sanctuary,  and  of 
the  true  tabernacle  which  the  Lord  pitched,  and  not  man." 

We  know  but  little  of  the  condition  of  separate  spirits  ; 
but  we  know,  assuredly,  from  the  witness  of  St.  Paul,  that 
they  are  "  present  with  the  Lord."+  Whatever  the  dwelling- 
place  which  they  tenant,  whilst  awaiting  the  magnificent 
things  of  a  resurrection,  the  glorified  humanity  of  the 
Savior  is  amongst  them,  and  they  are  privileged  to  hold 
immediate  communings  with  their  Head.  Thus  the  preacher, 
the  mighty  expounder  of  the  will  and  purposes  of  the 
Father,  moves  to  and  fro  through  the  admiring  throng  ;  and 
the  souls  of  those  who  have  loved  and  served  the  Redeemer 
upon  earth,  are  no  sooner  delivered  from  the  flesh,  than 
they  stand  in  the  presence  of  that  illustrious  Being  who  spake 
as  "  never  man  spake."  Is  he  silent  ?  Was  it  only  in  the 
day  of  humiliation,  and  in  the  hour  of  trouble,  that  he  had 
instruction  to  impart,  and  lessons  to  convey,  and  deep  and 

*Hosea,  13  :  14.  t  Romans.  2:  7. 

t  2  Corinthians,  5  :8. 


52  CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH. 

glorious  secrets  to  open  up  to  the  faithful  ?  He  who  describ- 
ed himself  as  actually  "  straitened  "  whilst  on  earth,  who 
had  many  things  to  say  which  his  hearers  were  not  able  to 
bear— think  ye  that,  in  a  nobler  scene,  and  with  spirits  before 
him,  all  whose  faculties  have  been  wondrously  enlarged  and 
sublimed,  he  delivers  not  the  homilies  of  a  mightier  teach- 
ing, and  leads  not  on  his  people  to  loftier  heights  of  know- 
ledge, and  broader  views  of  truth  ?  Oh,  we  cannot  but  be- 
lieve that  the  glorified  Redeemer  converses — though  thought 
cannot  scan  such  mysterious  and  majestic  converse — with 
those  blessed  beings  who  "  have  washed  their  robes  and 
made  them  white  "*  in  his  blood  ;  that  he  unfolds  to  them 
the  wonders  of  redemption  ;  and  teaches  them  the  magnifi- 
cence of  God  ;  and  spreads  out  to  their  contemplation  the 
freight  of  splendor  wherewith  the  second  Advent  is  charg- 
ed ;  and  carries  them  to  Pisgah  tops,  whence  they  look 
down  upon  the  landscapes,  burning  with  the  purple  and  the 
gold,  across  which  they  shall  pass  when  attired  in  the  livery 
of  the  resurrection — thus  making  the  place  of  separate  spirits 
a  church,  himself  the  preacher,  immortality  his  text.  Yea, 
when  we  think  on  the  countless  points  of  difference  and  de- 
bate between  men  who,  in  equal  sincerity,  love  the  Lord 
Jesus  ;  when  we  observe  how  those,  who  alike  place  all 
their  hopes  on  the  Mediator,  hold  opposite  opinions  on  many 
doctrines  ;  and  when  we  yet  further  remember  that  a  long 
life-time  of  study  and  prayer  leaves  half  the  Bible  unexplor- 
ed ;  there  is  palpably  so  much  to  be  unravelled,  so  much  to 
be  elucidated,  so  much  to  be  learned,  that  we  can  suppose 
the  Redeemer,  day  by  day — if  days  there  be  where  the  sun 
never  sets — imparting  fresh  intelligence  to  the  enraptured 
assembly,  and  causing  new  gladness  to  go  the  round  of  the 
crowded  ranks,  as  he  expounds  a  difficulty,  and  justifies  the 
ways  of  God  to  man. 

And  whether  or  no  we  be  overbold  in  even  hinting  at  the 
possible  subject-matter  of  discourse,  we  only  vindicate  the 
title  which  our  text  gives  to  the  Savior,  when  we  conclude 

*  Revelation,  7  :  14. 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH.  53 

that  as  the  God-man  passes  through  "  the  general  assembly 
and  church  of  the  first-born,"*  he  wraps  not  himself  up  in 
silence  and  loneliness  ;  but  that  speaking,  as  he  spake  with 
the  disciples  journeying  to  Emmaus,  he  opens  wonders,  and 
causes  every  heart  to  burn  and  bound.  So  that,  removed  as 
is  the  church  within  the  veil  from  the  ken  of  our  observa- 
tion, and  needing  not,  as  it  cannot  need,  those  deeds  of  an 
intercessor,  which  engage  chiefly,  in  our  own  case,  the  mi- 
nistry of  Christ,  Ave  can  yet  be  confident  that  in  the  Holy  of 
Holies  there  goes  onward  a  grand  work  of  instruction  ;  and 
thus  ascertaining,  that,  as  a  preacher  to  his  people,  Christ's 
office  is  not  limited  to  those  who  sojourn  in  the  flesh,  we 
can  understand  by  the  "  true  tabernacle  "  the  church  above 
conjointly  with  the  church  below,  and  yet  pronounce,  unre- 
servedly, of  Jesus,  that  he  is  "  a  minister  of  the  true  taberna- 
cle which  the  Lord  pitched,  and  not  man." 

Such,  brethren,  is  our  account  of  the  title  of  our  text, 
whether  respect  be  had  to  believers  in  glory,  or  to  believers 
still  warring  upon  earth.  If  we  have  dealt  correctly  with  the 
passage,  it  furnishes  one  great  practical  admonition,  already 
incidentally  mentioned,  which  it  will  be  well  that  you  keep 
diligently  in  mind.  When  you  attend  the  services  of  the 
sanctuary,  remember  who  is  the  minister  of  that  sanctuary. 
You  run  to  hear  this  man  preach,  and  then  that  man.  But 
who  amongst  you — let  me  speak  it  with  reverence — comes 
in  the  humble,  prayerful,  faithful  hope  of  hearing  Christ 
preach  ?  Yet  Christ  is  the  "  minister  of  the  true  tabernacle." 
Christ  preaches,  through  his  servants,  to  those  who  forget 
the  instrument,  and  use  meekly  the  ordinance. 

It  is  a  melancholy  and  dispiriting  thing  to  observe  how 
little  effect  seems  wrought  by  preaching.  We  take  the  case 
of  a  crowded  sanctuary,  where  the  business  of  listening  goes 
on  with  a  more  than  common  abstraction.  W"e  may  have 
before  us  the  rich  exhibition  of  an  apparently  riveted  atten- 
tion;  and  the  breathless  stillness  of  a  multitude  shall  give 
witness  how  they  are  hanging  on  the  lips  of  the  speaker. 

*  Hebrew-,  10  :  23. 


54  CHRrST    THE    MINISTER    OF    THE    CHURCH. 

And  if  he  grow  impassioned,  and  pour  out  his  oratory  on 
things  terribly  sublime,  the  countenances  of  hundreds  shall 
betray  a  convulsion  of  spirit— and  if  lie  speak  glowingly  of 
what  is  tender  and  beautiful,  the  sunniness  in  many  eyes 
shall  testify  to  their  feeling  an  emotion  of  dehghtsomeness. 
But  we  are  not  to  be  carried  away  by  the  charms  of  this 
spectacle.  We  know  too  thoroughly,  that,  with  the  closing 
of  the  sermon,  may  come  the  breaking  of  the  spell ;  and  that 
it  is  of  all  things  the  most  possible,  that,  if  we  pursued  to 
their  homes  these  earnest  listeners,  we  should  find  no  proof 
that  impression  had  been  made  by  the  enunciated  truths, 
and,  perhaps,  no  more  influential  remembrance  of  the  dis- 
course, by  whose  power  they  had  been  borne  completely 
away,  than  if  they  had  sat  fascinated  by  the  loveliness  of  a 
melody,  or  awe-struck  at  the  thnnderings  of  an  avalanche. 

And  the  main  reason  of  all  this  we  take  to  be  that  men 
forget  the  ordinance,  and  look  only  to  the  instrument.  If 
such  be  the  case,  it  is  no  marvel  that  they  derive  nothing 
from  preaching  but  a  little  animal  excitement,  and  a  little 
head-knowledge.  If  you  listen  not  for  the  voice  of  Christ, 
who  shall  wonder  that  you  hear  only  the  voice  of  man,  and 
so  go  away  to  your  homes  with  your  souls  unfed,  simply 
equipped  for  sitting  in  judgment  upon  the  sermon  as  you 
would  upon  a  tragedy,  and  ready  to  begin  the  review  with 
some  caustic  remark,  which  shall  prove,  that,  whatever  else 
you  have  learned,  you  have  not  learned  charity  ? 

Alas  !  the  times  on  which  we  have  fallen  are  so  evil  that 
there  is  almost  a  total  losing-sight  of  the  ordinance  of  a  visi- 
ble church.  Preaching  is  valued,  not  as  Christ's  mode  of 
ministering  to  his  people,  and,  therefore,  always  to  be  prized  : 
but  as  an  oratorical  display,  whose  worth,  like  that  of  a  plead- 
ing at  the  bar,  is  to  be  judged  by  the  skill  of  the  argument 
and  the  power  of  the  language. 

We  can  but  point  out  to  you  the  error.  It  must  remain 
with  yourselves  to  strive  to  correct  it.  "  Cease  ye  from 
man."*   When  and  where  is  this  injunction  so  needful  as  in 


CHRIST    THE    MINISTER    01     THE    CHURCH. 

a  church  and  on  a  Sabbath  ?  Every  thing  is  made  to  depend 
on  the  clergyman.  And  men  will  tell  you  that  he  is  very 
good,  but  very  dull ;  that  his  doctrine  is  sound,  but  his  de- 
livery heavy ;  that  he  is  inanimate,  or  ungraceful,  or  flowery, 
or  prosaic.  But  as  to  hearing  that  he  is  Christ's  servant,  an 
instrument  in  his  Master's  hands — who  meets  with  this  from 
the  Daii  to  the  Beersheba  of  our  Israel?  "Cease  ye  from 
man."  If  ye  hope  to  be  profited  by  preaching ;  if  ye  would 
become — and  this  is  a  noble  thing— independent  of  the 
preacher;  strive  ye  diligently  to  press  home  upon  your 
minds,  as  ye  draw  nigh  to  the  sanctuary,  that  Jesus  Christ 
is  the  "  minister  of  the  true  tabernacle/'  Thus  shall  ye  be 
always  secure  of  a  lesson,  and  so  be  trained  gradually  for 
that  inner  court  of  the  temple  where,  sitting  down  with  pa- 
triarchs, and  apostles,  and  saints,  at  the  feet  of  the  great 
Preacher  himself,  you  shall  learn,  and  enjoy,  immortality. 


SERMON    II J 


THE    IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT 


"  For  all  things  come  of  thee,  and  of  thine  own  have  we  given  thee." 
1  Chronicles,  29  :  14. 

Full  of  years,  of  riches,  and  of  honors,  David,  the  man 
after  God's  own  heart,  is  almost  ready  to  be  gathered  to  his 
fathers,  and  to  exchange  his  earthly  diadem  for  one  radiant 
with  immortality.  Yet,  ere  he  pass  into  his  Maker's  temple 
of  the  skies,he  would  provide  large  store  of  material  for  that 
terrestrial  sanctuary,  which,  though  it  must  not  be  reared 
by  himself,  he  knew  would  be  builded  by  Solomon.  The 
gold  and  the  silver,  the  onyx  stones,  and  the  stones  of  divers 
colors,  and  the  marbles,  these,  and  other  less  precious  com- 
modities, the  monarch  of  Israel  had  heaped  together  for  the 
work ;  and  now  he  summons  the  princes  of  the  congregation 
to  receive  in  trust  the  legacy. 

Yet  it  was  comparatively  but  little  to  bequeath  the  rich 
and  costly  produce  of  the  earth  ;  and  David  might  have  felt 
that  a  devoted  and  zealous  spirit  outweighed  vastly  the  me- 
tal and  the  jewel.  He  indeed  could  leave  behind  him  an 
abundance  of  all  that  was  needful  for  the  building  in  Jeru- 
salem a  house  for  the  ark  of  the  covenant ;  but  where  was 
the  piety,  where  the  holiness  of  enterprise,  which  should 
call  into  being  the  fabric  of  his  wishes  ? 

He  will  not  then  lie  down  in  his  grave  without  breathing 
over  the  rare  and  glittering  heaps  a  stirring,  yea,  almost 
thrilling  appeal  ;  demanding  who,  amid  the  assembled  mul- 
titude, would  emulate  his  example,  and  consecrate  his  ser- 
vice, that  day,  unto  the  Lord  ?  It  augured  well  for  the  king- 


IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT.  57 

dom  of  Judea  that  its  great  men,  and  its  nobles,  answered  to 
the  call,  as  a  band  of  devoted  warriors  to  the  trumpet-peal  of 
loyalty-  He  who  had  provided  rich  garniture  for  the  tem- 
ple's walls,  and  glorious  hymns  to  echo  through  its  courts, 
had  cause  to  lift  up  his  voice  with  gladness  and  bless  the 
Lord,  when  the  chief  of  the  fathers,  and  the  heads  of  the 
tribes,  offered  themselves  willingly,  and  swelled,  by  the  gift 
of  their  own  possessions,  the  treasures  already  devoted  to  the 
sanctuary.  He  had  now  good  earnest  that  the  cherished  pro- 
mise was  on  the  eve  of  fulfilment  ;  and  that  though,  having 
himself  shed  blood,  and  been  a  man  of  war  from  his  youth, 
it  was  not  fitting  that  he  should  rear  a  dwelling-place  for 
Deity,  one  who  sprang  from  his  own  loins  should  be  honor- 
ed as  the  builder  of  a  structure,  into  which  Jehovah  would 
descend  with  the  cloudy  majesty  of  a  mystic  Shekinah. 

But,  whilst  glad  of  heart  and  rejoicing,  David  felt  deeply 
how  unworthy  he  was  of  the  mercies  which  he  had  receiv- 
ed, and  how  marvellous  was  that  favor  of  Deity  of  which 
himself,  and  his  people,  had  been  objects.  The  nation  had 
come  forward,  and,  with  a  willing  heart,  dedicated  its  trea- 
sures to  Jehovah.  But  the  king,  whilst  exulting  at  such  evi- 
dence of  national  piety,  knew  well  that  God  alone  had  im- 
parted the  disposition  to  the  people,  and  that,  therefore,  God 
must  be  thanked  for  what  was  offered  to  God.  "  Now, 
therefore,"  saith  he,  "  our  God,  we  thank  thee,  and  praise 
thy  glorious  name.  But  who  am  I,  and  what  is  my  people, 
that  we  should  be  able  to  oiler  so  willingly  after  this  sort  ?" 
Two  things,  you  observe,  excited  his  gratitude  and  surprise  : 
first,  that  the  people  and  himself  should  have  so  much  to 
offer ;  secondly,  that  over  and  above  the  ability,  there  should 
be  the  willingness,  to  make  so  costly  an  oblation.  He  felt 
that  God  had  dealt  wondrously  with  Israel  in  emptying  into 
its  lap  the  riches  of  the  earth,  and  thus  rendering  it  possible 
that  piles  of  the  precious  and  the  beautiful  might  be  given, 
at  his  summons,  for  the  work  of  the  temple.  But  then  he  also 
felt  that  the  land  might  have  groaned  beneath  the  accumu- 
lations of  wealth  ;  but  that,  had  not  the  hearts  of  the  people 
been  made  willing  by  God,  no  fraction  of  the  enormous 
& 


53  IMPOSSIBILITY     OF   CRE.YTUKE-MERIT. 

mass  would  have  been  yielded  for  the  building  which  he 
longed  to  see  reared.  God  had  given  both  the  substance,  and 
the  willingness  to  consecrate  it  to  his  service.  And  when 
David  felt  the  privilege  of  a  temple  being  allowed  to  rise  in 
Jerusalem,  and,  at  the  same  time,  remembered  how  entirely 
it  was  of  God  that  there  was  either  the  ability,  or  the  readi- 
ness, to  build  the  structure  ;  he  might  well  burst  into  the  ex- 
clamation, "  Who  am  I,  and  what  is  my  people,  that  we 
should  be  able  to  offer  so  willingly  after  this  sort  ?"  and  then 
add,  in  the  words  of  our  text,  "  For  all  things  come  of  thee, 
and  of  thine  own  have  we  given  thee." 

You  may  thus  perceive  the  connection  between  the  words 
on  which  we  are  to  meditate,  and  those  which  immediately 
precede.  David,  as  we  have  shown  you,  expressed  surprise 
on  two  accounts,  each  of  which  is  indicated  by  our  text. 
He  marvels  that  God  should  have  blessed  the  people  with 
such  abundance,  and  explains  why  he  ascribes  the  abun- 
dance to  God,  by  saying,  "  All  things  come  of  thee."  But  he 
is  also  amazed  at  the  condescension  of  God  in  giving  will- 
ingness, as  well  as  ability,  to  the  people.  God  needed  not  to 
receive  at  the  creature's  hands,  and,  therefore,  it  was  pure 
love  which  moved  him  thus  to  influence  the  heart.  Nothing 
could  be  presented  to  him  which  was  not  already  his  ;  and 
might  not  then  David  be  justly  overpowered  by  the  gracious- 
ness  of  God,  seeing  that,  however  noble  the  offering,  "  of 
thine  own  have  we  given  thee,"  must  be  the  confession  by 
which  it  was  attended  ? 

There  will  be  no  necessity,  after  having  thus  stated  the 
occasion  on  which  the  text  was  delivered,  and  the  meaning 
which  it  originally  bore,  that  we  refer  again  to  the  prepara- 
tions of  David  for  building  the  temple.  It  is  evident  that 
the  words  are  of  most  general  applicability,  and  that  we 
need  not  take  account  of  the  circumstances  of  the  individual 
who  first  uttered  them,  when  we  would  interpret  their  mean- 
ing, or  extract  their  lessons.  We  shall,  therefore,  proceed  to 
consider  the  passage  as  detached  from  the  context,  and  as 
thus  presenting  us  with  truths  which  concern  equally  every 
age  and  every  individual. 


IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT.  59 

We  regard  the  words  before  us  as  resisting,  with  singular 
power,  the  notion  that  a  creature  can  merit.  We  know  not 
the  point  in  theology  which  requires  to  be  oftener  stated,  or 
more  carefully  established,  than  the  impossibility  that  a 
creature  should  merit  at  the  hands  of  the  Creator.  It  is  not 
to  be  controverted  that  men  are  disposed  to  entertain  the 
opinion  that  creature-merit  is  possible,  so  that  they  have  it 
in  their  power  to  effect  something  deserving  recompense 
from  God.  They  will  not  indeed  always  set  the  point  of 
merit  very  high.  They  will  rather  imitate  the  Pharisee  in 
the  parable,  who  evidently  thought  himself  meritorious  for 
stopping  a  degree  or  two  short  of  being  scandalous.  "  God, 
I  thank  thee  that  I  am  not  as  other  men  are,  extortioners, 
unjust,  adulterers."*  But  whether  it  be  at  a  low  point,  or  a 
lofty,  that  merit  is  supposed  to  commence,  every  man  must 
own  as  his  natural  sentiment  that  it  commences  at  some 
point ;  and  each  one  of  us,  if  he  have  ever  probed  his  own 
heart,  will  confess  himself  prone  to  the  persuasion,  that  the 
creature  can  lay  the  Creator  under  obligation.  We  find  our- 
selves able  to  deserve  well  of  one  another,  to  confer  favors, 
and  to  contract  debts.  And  when  we  carry  up  our  thoughts 
from  the  finite  to  the  infinite,  we  quite  forget  the  total  change 
in  the  relationship  ;  and  we  perceive  not  that  the  position 
m  which  we  stand  to  our  Maker  excludes  those  deservings 
which,  unquestionably,  have  place  between  man  and  man. 
Men  simply  view  God  as  the  mightiest  of  sovereigns,  and, 
knowing  it  possible  to  do  a  favor  to  their  king,  conclude  it 
possible  to  do  a  favor  to  their  God. 

Now  it  must  be  of  first-rate  importance  that  we  ascertain 
the  truth  or  the  falsehood  of  such  a  conclusion.  The  me- 
thod in  which  we  may  look  to  be  saved  will  greatly  vary, 
according  as  we  admit,  or  deny,  the  possibility  of  merit.  It 
is  quite  clear  that  our  moral  position,  if  we  cannot  merit, 
must  be  vastly  different  from  what  it  is,  if  we  can  merit,  and 
that,  consequently,  the  apparatus  of  deliverance  cannot,  in 
the  two  cases,  be  the  same.    So  that  it  is  no  point  of  curious 

*Luke,  18  :  11. 


60  IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT. 

and  metaphysical  speculation,  whether  merit  be  consistent 
with  creatureship.  On  the  contrary,  there  cannot  be  a  ques- 
tion whose  decision  involves  inferences  of  greater  practical 
moment.  If  I  can  merit,  salvation  may  be  partly  of  debt, 
and  I  may  earn  it  as  wages.  If  I  cannot  merit,  salvation 
must  be  wholly  of  grace,  and  I  must  receive  it  as  a  gift. 
And  thus  every  dispute  upon  justification  by  faith,  every 
debate  in  reference  to  works  as  a  procuring  cause  of  accep- 
tance, would  virtually  be  settled  by  the  settlement  of  the  im- 
possibility of  creature-merit.  Questions  such  as  these  are 
best  determined  by  reference  to  first  principles.  And  if  you 
had  once  demonstrated  that  merit  is  inconsistent  with  crea- 
tureship, you  would  have  equally  demonstrated  that  neither 
faith,  nor  works,  can  procure  man's  salvation  in  the  way  of 
desert ;  but  that,  whatever  the  instrumentality  through  which 
justification  is  effected,  justification  itself  must  be  wholly  of 
grace. 

Now  we  think,  that,  in  examining  the  words  of  our  text, 
we  shall  find  powerful  reasons  from  which  to  conclude  the 
impossibility  of  merit.  The  text  may  be  said  to  state  a  fact, 
and  then  an  inference  from  that  fact.  The  fact  is,  that  "  All 
things  come  of  God  :"  the  inference  is,  that  a  creature  can 
give  God  nothing  which  is  not  already  his  own.  We  will 
examine  successively  the  fact,  and  the  inference  ;  and  then 
apply  the  passage  to  the  doctrine  which  we  desire  to 
establish. 

We  are,  in  the  first  place,  to  speak  on  the  stated  fact,  that 
all  things  come  of  God. 

Now  there  is  nothing  more  wonderful  in  respect  to  Deity 
than  that  universality  of  operation  which  is  always  ascribed 
to  him.  One  grand  distinction  between  the  infinite  being, 
and  all  finite  beings,  appears  to  us  to  be,  that  the  one  can  be 
working  a  thousand  things  at  once,  whilst  the  energies  of 
the  others  must  confine  themselves  to  one  work  at  one  time. 
If  you  figure  to  yourselves  the  highest  of  created  intelli- 
gences, you  endow  him  with  a  might  which  leaves  immea- 
surably behind  the  noblest  human  powers ;  but  you  never 
think  of  investing  him  with  the  ability  of  acting,  at  the  same 


IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT.  61 

time,  on  this  globe,  and  on  one  of  those  far-off  planets  which 
we  see  traveling  around  ns.  Yon  make,  in  short,  the  strength 
of  an  archangel  by  multiplying  the  strength  of  a  man.  But, 
whatever  the  degree  up  to  which  you  think  it  needful  to 
multiply,  you  never  add  to  the  strength  the  incomprehen- 
sible property,  that  it  may  be  exerting  itself,  at  the  same  mo- 
ment; in  places  between  which  there  is  an  untraveled  sepa- 
ration, and  causing  its  mightiness  to  be  simultaneously  felt 
in  the  various  districts  of  a  crowded  immensity.  If  you  even 
multiplied  finite  power  till  you  supposed  it  to  become  infi- 
nite, you  would  only  keep  adding  to  its  intenseness,  and 
would  in  no  degree  attribute  to  it  ubiquity.  And,  however 
you  might  suppose  this  multiplied  power  capable  of  won- 
ders which  seem  to  demand  the  interpositions  of  Deity,  you 
would  still  consider,  that  these  wonders  must  be  performed 
in  succession ;  and  you  would  never  imagine  of  the  power, 
that,  in  the  depths  of  every  ocean,  and  on  the  surface  of 
every  star,  it  could,  at  the  same  instant,  be  putting  forth  its 
magnificent  workings. 

And  thus  it  is  that  the  Omnipresence  of  Godhead  is  that 
property,  which,  more  than  any  other,  outruns  our  concep- 
tions. In  multiplying  power,  so  to  speak,  you  never  multiply 
presence.  But  when  you  had  even  wrought  up  the  idea  of 
a  power  which  can  create,  and  annihilate,  you  would  give  it 
one  thing  to  create  at  once,  and  one  thing  to  annihilate  at 
once  ;  and  you  would  never  suppose  it  busy  equally,  in  all 
its  glory  and  all  its  resistlessness,  in  every  department  of  an 
universe,  and  with  every  fraction  of  infinity. 

So  that  the  topmost  marvel  is  that  "  All  things  come  of 
God."  The  unapproachable  mystery — it  is  not  that  God 
should  be  in  the  midst  of  this  sanctuary,  and  that  he  should 
be  ministering  life  to  those  gathered  within  its  walls — it  is, 
that  he  should  be  no  more  here  than  he  is  elsewhere,  and 
no  more  elsewhere  than  he  is  here ;  and  that  with  as  actual 
a  concentration  of  energy  as  though  he  had  no  other  occu- 
pation, he  should  be  supplying  our  fast-recurring  necessities ; 
and  yet  that,  with  such  a  diffusion  of  presence  as  causes  him 
to  be  equally  every  where,  he  should  superintend  each  dis- 


62  IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT. 

trict  of  creation,  and  give  out  vitality  to  each  order  of  be- 
ings. "  All  things  come  of  God."  It  is  not  merely  that  all 
things  come  of  God  by  original  production  ;  all  things  come 
of  God  by  after-sustainment.  And  whether  you  consider  the 
visible  world,  or  the  invisible ;  whether  you  extend  your 
thoughts  over  the  unmeasured  fields  of  materialism,  or  send 
them  to  the  survey  of  those  countless  ranks  of  intelligence 
which  stretch  upwards  between  yourselves  and  your  Ma- 
ker— you  are  bound  to  the  belief  that  every  spot  in  the  un- 
limited space,  and  every  member  of  the  teeming  assemblage, 
requires  and  receives  the  operations  of  Deity ;  and  that  if, 
for  a  lonely  instant,  those  operations  were  suspended,  worlds 
would  jostle  and  make  a  new  chaos,  while  a  disastrous  bank- 
ruptcy of  life  would  succeed  to  the  present  exuberance  of 
animation. 

So  that  it  is  as  trtie  of  the  angelic  hosts,  moving  in  their 
power  and  their  purity,  as  of  ourselves,  fallen  from  immor- 
tality, and  beggared,  and  weakened,  that  "  all  things  come 
of  God."  There  can  be  but  one  independent  being,  and  on 
that  one  all  others  must  depend.  An  independent  being 
must,  necessarily,  be  self-existent,  possessing  in  himself  all 
the  well-springs  of  life,  and  all  the  sources  of  happiness.  A 
being  whose  existence  is  derived  must,  as  necessarily,  be  de- 
pendent on  the  first  author  for  the  after-continuance.  A  be- 
ing who  could  do  without  God  would  himself  be  God  ;  and 
there  needs  no  argument  to  prove  to  you,  that,  whatever  else 
God  could  make,  he  could  not  make  himself.  And  you  must 
take  it,  therefore,  as  a  truth  which  admits  not  limitation,  that 
"  all  things  come  of  God ;"  so  that  there  is  not  the  order  of 
creatures,  whether  material  or  immaterial,  which  stands  not, 
every  moment,  indebted  for  every  thing  to  God,  or  which, 
however  rare  its  endowments,  and  however  majestic  its  pos- 
sessions, could  dispense,  for  one  instant,  with  communica- 
tions from  the  fullness  of  the  Almighty,  or  be  thrown  on  its 
own  energies,  without  being  thrown  to  darkness  and  de- 
struction. 

And  though  it  suit  not  our  purpose  that  we  should  dwell 
long  on  the  fact  that  "  all  things  come  of  God,"  yet,  associa- 


IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT.  63 

ted  as  this  fact  is  with  whatsoever  is  most  wonderful  in 
Deity,  we  may  call  upon  you  to  admire  it,  before  we  proceed 
to  the  inference  which  it  furnishes.  It  is  an  august  and  an 
overpowering  thought,  that  our  God  should  be  alike  present 
on  every  star,  and  in  each  of  its  minutest  recesses  ;  and  that, 
though  there  be  a  vast  employment  of  the  mechanism  of  se- 
cond causes,  there  is  not  wrought  a  beneficial  effect  through- 
out the  boundless  expansions  of  creation,  whose  actual  au- 
thorship can  be  referred  to  any  thing  short  of  the  great  first 
cause.  It  is  a  noble  contemplation,  though  one  by  which  our 
faculties  are  presently  confounded,  that  of  the  whole  universe 
hanging  upon  Deity;  archangel,  and  angel,  and  man,  and 
beast,  and  worm,  receiving  momentary  supplies  from  the 
same  inexhaustible  fountain  ;  and  every  tenant  of  every  sys- 
tem appealing  to  the  common  parent  to  preserve  it,  each  in- 
stant, from  extinction.  Oh,  we  take  it  for  a  cold,  and  a  with- 
ered heart,  which  is  conscious  of  no  unusual  and  overcoming 
emotions,  when  there  is  told  forth  the  amazing  fact,  that  the 
God,  who  hearkens  to  the  prayer  of  the  meanest  and  most 
despised,  and  who  is  verily  present,  in  all  his  omnipotence, 
when  invoked  by  the  very  poorest  of  the  children  of  cala- 
mity, should  be  actuating,  at  the  same  moment,  all  the  ma- 
chinery of  the  universe,  and  inspiring  all  its  animation ; 
guiding  the  rollings  of  every  planet,  and  the  leap  of  every 
cataract,  and  dealing  out  existence  to  every  thing  that 
breatheth.  We  say  again  that  it  is  this  property  of  God,  the 
property  of  acting  every  where  at  once,  so  that  all  things 
come  of  him,  which  removes  him  furthest  from  companion- 
ship with  the  finite,  and  makes  him  inaccessible  to  all  the 
soarings  of  the  creature.  It  is  the  property  to  which  we  have 
nothing  analogous  amongst  ourselves,  even  on  the  most  re- 
duced and  miniature  scale.  A  creature  must  be  local.  He 
must  cease  to  act  in  one  place  before  he  can  begin  to  act  in 
another.  But  the  Creator  knows  nothing  whether  of  distance 
or  time.  Inhabiting  sublimely  both  infinity  and  eternity, 
there  cannot  be  the  spot  in  space,  nor  the  instant  in  dura- 
tion, when  and  where  he  is  not  equally  present.  And  seeing 
that  he  thus  occupies  the  universe,  not  as  being  diffused 


CI  IMPOSSIBILITY    OF     CREATURE-MERIT. 

over  it,  but  as  existing,  in  all  his  integrity,  in  its  every  divi- 
sion and  subdivision ;  and,  seeing,  moreover,  that  he  waits 
not  the  passage  of  centuries,  but  is  at  "  the  end  from  the  be- 
ginning ;;'*  it  can  be  literally  true,  without  exaggeration,  and 
without  figure,  that  "  all  things  come  of  him  ;"  whatsoever 
there  is  of  good  being  wrought  by  him,  whatsoever  of  evil, 
permitted  ;  the  present  being  of  his  performance,  and  the 
future  of  his  appointment. 

And  it  is  worth  observing,  that,  if  it  must  be  the  confes- 
sion of  every  order  of  being  that  "  all  things,"  whatsoever 
they  possess,  "  come  of  God,"  such  confession  must  be  bind- 
ing, with  a  double  force,  upon  man.  It  must  be  true  of  us, 
on  the  principles  which  prove  it  true  generally  of  creatures, 
that  we  have  nothing  which  we  have  not  received,  and  for 
which,  therefore,  we  stand  not  indebted  to  Deity.  But  then, 
by  our  rebellion  and  apostasy,  there  was  a  forfeiture,  we  say 
not  of  rights — for  we  deny  that  the  creature  can  have  right 
to  any  thing  from  the  Creator — but  of  those  privileges  which 
God,  in  his  mercy,  conferred  on  the  work  of  his  hands.  As 
a  benevolent  being,  we  may  be  sure  that  God  would  not  call 
creatures  into  existence,  and  then  dismiss  them  from  his 
care  and  his  guardianship.  And  though  we  pretend  not  to 
say  that  creatureship  gave  a  positive  claim  on  the  Creator, 
it  rendered  it  a  thing  on  which  we  might  venture  to  calcu- 
late, that,  so  long  as  the  creature  obeyed,  the  Creator  would 
minister  to  his  every  necessity.  But,  as  soon  as  there  was  a 
failure  in  obedience,  it  was  no  longer  to  be  expected  that 
creatureship  would  insure  blessings.  The  instant  that  a 
race  of  beings  declined  from  loyalty  to  God,  there  was  no- 
thing to  be  looked  for  but  the  suspension  of  all  the  outgoings 
of  the  Creator's  beneficence  ;  seeing  that  the  law,  entailed  by 
creatureship,  having  been  violated,  the  privileges  to  which 
it  admitted  were  of  necessity  forfeited. 

And  this  was  the  position  in  which  the  human  race  stood, 
when,  by  the  first  transgression,  God's  service  was  renounc- 
ed.    Whatever  the  fairness  with  which  Adam  might  have 

*  haiah,  46  :  10. 


IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CKEATU  RE-MERIT.  65 

calculated,  that,  if  he  continued  obedient,  his  every  want 
would  be  supplied,  he  could  not  reckon,  when  he  had  broken 
the  command,  on  a  breath  of  air,  or  a  ray  of  sunshine,  or  a 
particle  of  food.  It  was  no  longer,  if  we  may  use  the  expres- 
sion, natural,  that  he  should  be  upheld  in  being  and  suffi- 
ciency. On  the  contrary,  the  probability  must  have  been 
that  he  would  be  immediately  annihilated,  or  left  to  consume 
away  piece-meal.  And  since,  in  spite  of  this  forfeiture,  we 
are  still  in  the  enjoyment  of  all  the  means  and  mercies  of 
existence,  we  must  be  bound,  even  far  more  than  angels  who 
never  transgressed,  to  acknowledge  that  "  all  things  come  of 
God."  Angels  receive  all  things  by  the  charter  of  creation. 
But  man  tore  up  that  charter  ;  and  we  should  therefore  re- 
ceive nothing,  had  there  not  been  given  us  a  new  charter, 
even  the  charter  of  redemption.  So  that  God  hath  made  a 
fresh  and  special  arrangement  on  behalf  of  the  fallen.  And 
now,  whatsoever  we  possess,  whether  it  have  to  do  with  our 
intellectual  part,  or  our  animal,  with  the  present  life  or  the 
future,  is  delivered  into  our  hands  stamped,  so  to  speak,  with 
the  sign  of  the  cross  ;  and  we  learn  that  "  all  things  come  of 
God,"  because  all  things,  even  the  most  common  and  insig- 
nificant, flow  through  the  channel  of  a  superhuman  media- 
tion, and  are  sprinkled  with  the  blood  to  which  Divinity 
gave  preciousness. 

But  we  may  consider  that  we  have  sufficiently  examined 
the  fact  asserted  in  our  text,  and  may  pass  on,  secondly,  to 
the  inference  which  it  furnishes. 

This  inference  is — and  you  can  require  no  argument  to 
prove  to  you  its  justice — that  we  can  give  God  nothing 
which  is  not  already  his.  "  All  things  come  of  thee,  and  of 
thine  oxen  have  we  given  thee."  You  must  perceive  at  once, 
that,  if  it  be  true  of  the  creatures  of  every  rank  of  intelli- 
gence, that  they  possess  nothing  which  they  have  not  re- 
ceived from  God,  they  can  offer  nothing  which  is  purely  and 
strictly  their  own.  But  it  is  necessary  that  we  examine,  with 
something  of  attention,  into  the  nature  of  God's  gifts,  in  or- 
der to  remove  an  objection  which  might  be  brought  against 
our  statements.  If  one  creature  give  a  thing  to  another,  he 
9 


66  IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT. 

ceases  to  have  property  in  the  gift,  and  cannot  again  claim 
it  as  his  own.  If  a  man  make  me  a  present,  he  virtually 
cedes  all  title  to  the  thin-  given  ;  and  if  I  were  afterwards  to 
restore  him  the  whole,  or  a  part,  it  would  he  of  mine  own, 
and  not  of  his  own,  that  I  gave  him.  But  if— for  even 
amongst  ourselves  we  may  find  a  case  somewhat  analogous 
to  that  of  the  Creator  in  his  dealings  with  creatures— if  I 
were  reduced  to  utter  poverty,  with  no  means  whatsoever  of 
earning  a  livelihood  ;  and  if  a  generous  individual  came  for- 
ward, and  gave  me  capital,  and  set  me  up  in  trade;  and  if, 
in  mine  after-prosperity,  I  should  bring  my  benefactor  some 
offering  expressive  of  gratitude  ;  it  is  clear  that  I  might,  with 
the  strictest  truth,  say,  "  of  thine  own  do  I  give  thee."  I 
should  be  indebted  to  my  benefactor  for  what  I  was  able  to 
give ;  and,  of  course,  that  for  which  I  stood  indebted  to  him 
might  be  declared  to  be  his.  But  even  this  case  comes  far 
short  of  that  of  the  Creator  and  the  creature.  The  creature 
belongs  to  God :  and  God,  therefore,  cannot  give  to  the  crea- 
ture in  that  sense  in  which  one  creature  may  give  to  another. 
All  that  the  creature  is,  and  all  that  the  creature  has,  apper- 
tains to  God ;  so  that,  in  giving,  God  alienates  not  his  pro- 
perty in  that  which  he  bestows.  If  he  own,  so  to  speak,  the 
angel,  or  the  man,  then  whatever  the  angel,  or  the  man  pos- 
sesses, belongs  still  to  his  proprietor ;  and  though  that  pro- 
prietor may  give  things  to  be  used,  they  must  continue  his 
own,  in  themselves,  and  in  their  produce.  If  indeed  it  were 
possible  that  a  creature  could  become  the  property  of  any 
other  than  the  Creator,  it  might  be  also  possible  that  a  crea- 
ture could  possess  what  was  not  the  Creator's.  But  as  long 
as  it  is  certain  that  no  creature  can  have  right  to  call  him- 
self his  own— the  fact  of  creation  making  him  God"s  by  an 
invulnerable  title— it  ought  to  be  received  as  a  self-evident 
truth,  that  no  creature  can  possess  a  good  thing  which  is  his 
own.  All  which  he  receives  from  the  bounty  of  God  still  be- 
longs to  God.  So  that  if  whatsoever  is  brilliant  and  holy  in 
the  universe  combined  to  fashion  an  offering ;  if  the  depths 
of  the  mines  were  fathomed  for  the  richest  of  metals,  and 
the  starry  pavilions  swept  of  their  jewelry,  and  the  ranks  ol 


IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT.  b  ( 

the  loftiest  intelligence  laid  under  contribution  ;  there  could 
be  poured  no  gift  into  the  coffers  of  heaven  ;  but  the  splendid 
oblation,  thus  brought  to  the  Almighty,  would  be  his  before, 
as  much  as  after  presentation. 

And  this  truth  it  is  by  which  we  look  to  demonstrate  the 
impossibility  of  creature-merit.  We  will  begin  with  the 
highest  order  of  created  intelligence,  and  we  will  ask  you 
whether  the  angel,  or  the  archangel,  can  merit  of  God?  If 
one  being  merit  of  another,  it  must  perform  some  action 
which  it  was  not  obliged  to  perform,  and  by  which  that 
other  is  advantaged.  Nothing  else,  as  you  must  perceive  if 
you  will  be  at  the  pains  of  thinking,  can  constitute  merit.  I 
do  another  a  favor,  and,  therefore,  deserve  at  his  hands,  if  I 
do  something  by  which  he  is  profited,  and  which  I  was  not 
obliged,  by  mere  duty,  to  do.  If  either  of  these  conditions 
fail,  merit  must  vanish.  If  the  other  party  gain  nothing,  he 
can  owe  me  nothing ;  and  if  I  have  only  done  what  duty 
prescribed,  he  had  a  right  to  the  action,  and  cannot,  there- 
fore, have  been  laid  under  obligation. 

Now  if  this  be  a  just  description  of  merit,  can  the  angel  or 
the  archangel  deserve  any  thing  of  God  ?  We  wave  the  con- 
sideration, that,  if  there  be  merit,  God  must  be  advantaged — 
though  there  lies  in  it  the  material  of  an  overpowering  proof 
that  the  notion  of  creature-merit  is  little  short  of  blasphe- 
mous. Who  can  think  of  being  profitable  unto  God,  when 
he  remembers  the  independence  of  Deity,  and  calls  to  mind 
that  there  was  a  time  when  the  Creator  had  not  surrounded 
himself  with  worlds  and  tribes,  and  when,  occupied  with 
glorious  and  ineffable  communings,  the  Father,  Son,  and 
Spirit,  reaped  in  from  the  deep  solitudes  of  immensity  as  full 
a  revenue  of  happiness  as  they  now  gather  from  its  thickly- 
peopled  circles  ?  No  creature  can  do  without  God.  But  God 
could  have  done  without  creatures.  They  were  not  neces- 
sary to  God.  There  was  no  void  in  his  blessedness  which 
required  the  contributions  of  creatures  before  it  could  be 
filled  up.  And  it  must  be  absurd  to  talk  of  advantaging  God, 
when  we  know  that  his  magnificence  and  his  happiness 
would  have  been  infinite,  had  he  chosen  to  dwell  for  ever  in 


68  IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT. 

his  sublime  loneliness,  and  suffered  not  the  stillness  of  the 
unmeasured  expanse,  full  only  of  himself,  to  be  broken  by 
the  hum  of  a  swarming-  population. 

But  we  wave  this  consideration.  We  fasten  you  to  the 
fact,  that  a  meritorious  action  must  be  an  action  of  which 
duty  demands  not  the  performance.  If  the  angel  have  spare 
time  which  belongs  not  to  God  ;  if  the  angel  have  material 
which  belongs  not  to  God ;  let  the  angel  bestow  that  time 
upon  that  material,  and  let  him  bring  the  result  as  an  obla- 
tion to  his  Maker  ;  and  there  shall  be  merit  in  that  oblation  ; 
and  he  shall  gain  a  recompense  on  the  plea  of  desert ;  accord- 
ing to  the  rule  which  an  apostle  hath  laid  down,  "who  hath 
first  given  to  the  Lord,  and  it  shall  be  recompensed  unto  him 
again  ?"*  If  the  angel  have  powers  which  he  is  under  no 
obligation  of  consecrating  to  God  ;  if  they  are  mightier  than 
suffice  for  duty ;  and  if  there  be,  therefore,  an  overplus  which 
lie  is  at  liberty  to  bestow  on  some  work  of  supererogation  ; 
let  him  employ  these  uncalled-for  energies  in  extra  and  un- 
prescribed  service,  and,  doubtless,  his  claim  shall  not  be  un- 
heeded when  he  gives  in  the  additional  and  voluntary  per- 
formance. But  if  the  angel  have  time  which  belongs  not  to 
God  ;  and  if  the  angel  have  power  which  he  is  not  required 
to  dedicate  to  God  ;  there  is  an  end  of  the  proved  truth,  "  of 
thine  own  have  we  given  thee."  In  determining  the  question, 
whether  a  creature  can  merit,  we  have  nothing  to  do,  ab- 
stractedly, with  the.  magnificence  of  the  energies  of  that 
creature,  nor  with  the  stupendousness  of  the  achievements 
which  he  is  capable  of  effecting.  There  is  not,  of  necessity, 
any  greater  reason  why  an  angel  should  merit,  because  able 
to  move  a  world,  than  why  a  worm  should  merit,  because 
just  able  to  crawl  upon  its  surface.  The  whole  question  of 
the  possibility  of  merit  is  a  question  of  the  possibility  of  out- 
running duty.  Unless  duty  be  exceeded,  ever}'"  creature  must 
receive,  as  applicable  to  himself,  the  words  of  the  Savior, 
"  When  ye  shall  have  done  all  those  things  which  are  com- 
manded you,  say,  we  are  unprofitable  servants,''  (and,  if  un- 
profitable, certainly  not  meritorious ;)  "  we  have  done  that 
which  was  our  duty  to  do."t 

♦Romans,  11  :  H5.  t  St.  Luke,  17  :  10. 


IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT.  69 

And  if  duty  thus  exclude  merit,  the  condition  of  the  an- 
gel, as  much  as  that  of  the  worm,  excludes  merit.  If  all 
which  the  angel  has  belong  to  the  Creator  ;  if  that  noble  In- 
tel! igence  which  elevates  him  far  above  our  own  level  be  the 
property  of  God  ;  if  that  awful  might,  which  could  strew  the 
ground  with  the  thousands  of  the  Assyrian  host,  be  commu- 
nicated by  Deity  ;  if  that  velocity  of  flight,  which  fits  him  to 
go  on  embassages  to  the  very  outskirts  of  creation,  be  impart- 
ed by  his  Maker — there  must  be  a  demand,  an  inalienable 
demand,  upon  the  angel,  for  every  instant  of  his  time,  and  for 
every  fraction  of  his  strength,  and  for  every  waving  of  his 
wing.  Duty,  the  duty  which  is  imposed  upon  him  by  the  fact 
of  his  creatureship,  can  draw  no  frontier-line  excluding  from 
a  required  consecration  to  God  the  minutest  item  of  those 
multiform  possessions,  which  render  him  a  splendid  and  mas- 
terful thing,  the  nearest  approach  to  Divinity  in  all  that  in- 
terminable series  of  productions  which  bounded  into  being 
at  the  call  of  the  Omnipotent. 

So  that  the  angel,  just  as  much  as  the  meanest  of  creatures, 
must  say  of  all  that  he  can  bring  to  God,  of  thine  own  do  I 
give  thee.  It  is,  indeed,  a  costlier  offering  than  the  human 
eye  hath  seen,  or  the  human  thought  imagined.  There  is  a 
fervor  of  affection,  and  a  grasp  of  understanding,  and  a 
strenuousness  of  labor,  aye,  and  an  intenseness  of  self-abase- 
ment and  humility,  which  enter  not  into  the  best  and  purest 
of  the  oblations  which  are  laid  by  ourselves  at  the  feet  of  our 
Maker.  But  as  there  is  not  one  jot  less  than  duty  prescribes, 
neither  is  there  one  jot  more.  God  gave  all  which  is  brought 
to  him.  His  the  glowing  love.  His  the  soaring  intellect.  His 
the  awful  vigor.  His  the  beautiful  lowliness.  And  shall  he 
be  laid  under  obligation  by  his  own  ?  Shall  he  be  bound  to 
make  return,  because  he  hath  received  of  his  own  ?  Oh,  we 
may  discuss,  and  debate,  upon  earth,  the  possibility,  or  the 
impossibility,  of  creature-merit.  But  we  may  be  sure,  that,  if 
the  question  could  be  propounded  to  angels,  the  thought  of 
merit  would  be  rejected  as  treason.  Standing  in  the  immedi- 
ate presence  of  their  glorious  Creator;  privileged  to  gaze,  so 
far  as  it  is  possible  for  creatures  to  gaze  without  being  wi- 


70  IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT. 

thered,  on  his  unveiled  lustres  ;  and  fraught  with   the  con- 
sciousness, that,  however  wonderful  their  powers  and  capa- 
cities, they  possess  nothing  which  God  did  not  give,  and 
which  God  might  not  instantly  withdraw — angels  must  feel 
that  the  attempt  to  deserve  of  the  Almighty  would  be  tanta- 
mount to  an  attempt  to  dethrone  the  Almighty,  and  that  the 
supposing  that  more  might  be  done  than  is  demanded  by 
dutv,  would  be  the  supposing  an  eternity  exhausted,  and 
time  left  for  some  praiseworthy  exploits.     Angels  must  dis- 
cern, with  an  acuteness  of  perception  never  reached  by  our- 
selves whilst  hampered  by  corruption,  that  each  energy  in 
their  endowment  constitutes  a  requisition  for  a  contribution 
of  glory  to  Jehovah  ;  and  that  the  endeavor  to  employ   it  to 
the  procuring  greatness,  or  happiness,  for  themselves,  would 
amount  to  a  base  and  fatal  prostitution,  causing  them  at  once 
to  be  ranked  with  the  apostate.     And  thus,  upon  the  simple 
principle  that  "  all  things  come  of  God,"  and  that  only  of  his 
own  can  they  give  him,  angels,  who  are  vast  in  might,  and 
brilliant  in  purity,  would  count  it  the  breaking  into  rebellion 
to  entertain  the  thought  of  the  possibility  of  merit ;  and  un- 
less you  could  prove  to  them  that  God  had  given  less  than 
all,  that  there  were  abilities  in  their  nature  which  they  had 
derived  from  sources  independent  on  Deity,  and  that,  conse- 
quently, their  duty  towards  God  required  not  the  dedication 
of  every  iota  of  every  faculty;  unless  you  could  prove  to 
them  this — and  you  might  prove  this,  when  you  could  show 
them  two  Gods,  two  Creators,  and  parcel  out  between  two 
Almighties  the  authorship  of  their  surpassing  endowments — 
you  would  make  no  way  with  your  demonstration,  that  it 
was  possible  for  an  angel  to  deserve  of  God.  You  might  ac- 
cumulate your  arguments.     But  as  long  as  they  reached  not 
the  point  thus  marked  out,  still,  as  the  shining  and  potent 
beings  came  in  from  the  execution  of  lofty  commissions,  and 
poured  into  the  treasury  of  their  Maker  the  noble  contribu- 
tions of  his  accomplished  purposes,  oh,  they  would  veil  their 
faces,  and  bow  down  in  lowliness,  and  confess  themselves  un- 
profitable ;  and,  in  place  of  grounding  a  claim  on  the  em- 
ployment of  their  energies  in  the  service  of  Jehovah,  rever- 


IMLrossiElLlTV    OF    CKKA'I  U  RE-M  LUI  f.  71 

ently  declare  that  the  non-employment  would  have  deserved 
the  fire  and  the  rack ;  so  that,  throwing  from  them  as  impi- 
ous the  notion  of  merit,  they  would  roll  this  chorus  through 
the  heavenly  Temple,  "  all  things  come  of  thee,  and  of  thine 
own,  O  God,  have  we  given  thee." 

Now  if  we  bring  down  our  inquiry  from  the  higher  orders 
of  intelligence  to  the  lower,  we,  of  course,  carry  with  us  the 
proof  which  has  been  advanced  of  the  impossibility  of  merit. 
If  we  pass  from  the  case  of  angels  to  that  of  men,  we  may 
fairly  apply  the  results  of  our  foregoing  argument,  and  consi- 
der the  one  case  as  involved  in  the  other.  It  will  hardly  be 
disputed,  that,  ifcreatureship  exclude  the  possibility  of  merit 
from  amongst  angels,  it  must  also  exclude  it  from  amongst 
men.  We  argue  not,  indeed,  that  merit  is  more  out  of  the 
reach  of  one  rank  of  beings  than  of  another.  We  simply 
contend  that  with  every  rank  of  being  merit  is  an  impossibi- 
lity ;  but,  since  a  thing  cannot  be  more  than  impossible,  we, 
of  course,  do  not  speak  of  degrees  of  impossibility.  And  yet, 
undoubtedly,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  an  angel  comes 
nearer  merit  than  a  man.  An.  angel  falls  not  short  of  duty, 
though  it  cannot  exceed ;  and,  therefore,  it  deserves  nothing, 
neither  wrath  nor  reward.  A  man,  on  the  contrary,  falls  short 
of  duty,  and,  therefore,  deserves  wrath  ;  though,  even  if  he 
Jell  not  short,  he  could  not  exceed,  and,  therefore,  could  not 
deserve  reward.  So  that  the  angel  goes  further  than  the 
man.  The  angel  fulfills  duty,  but  cannot  overstep.  The  man 
leaves  a  vast  deal  undone  which  he  is  required  to  do ;  and 
he  must,  at  least,  make  up  deficiencies,  before  he  can  think 
of  an  overplus.  We  may  consider,  then,  that  in  proving  the 
impossibility  of  creature-merit,  when  the  creature  is  angelic, 
we  have  equally  proved  it,  when  the  creature  is  human. 
And  thus  Heaven  would  have  been  as  much  a  free-gift  to 
Adam,  had  he  never  disobeyed  by  eating  of  the  fruit,  as 
it  now  is  to  the  vilest  of  his  descendants,  with  the  treason- 
banner  in  his  hand,  and  the  leprosy-spot  on  his  forehead. 
Had  Adam  walked  unflinchingly  through  his  probation- 
time,  spurning  back  the  tempter,  and  swerving  not  an  iota 
from  loyalty  and  love  ;  and  had  he  then  appeared  before  his 


72  IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CHEAT  URE-.MEK  1 1  . 

Maker,  exclaiming,  now,  O  God,  I  have  deserved  immorta- 
lity ;  why,  this  very  speech  would  have  been  the  death-knell 
of  our  creation  :  and  Adam  would  as  actually  have  fallen, 
and  as  actually  have  sent  down  the  dark  bequeathments  of  a 
curse  to  his  latest  posterity,  by  pretending  to  have  merited 
because  he  had  obeyed,  as  now  that  he  led  the  van  in  rebel- 
lion, and,  breaking  a  positive  law,  dislocated  the  happiness 
of  a  countless  population. 

We  thus  consider  that  the  impossibility  of  human  merit 
follows,  as  a  corollary,  on  our  demonstration  of  the  impossi- 
bility of  angelic.  But  we  shall  not  content  ourselves  with 
inferring  the  one  case  from  the  other.  Feeling  deeply  the 
importance  of  your  understanding  thoroughly  why  you  can- 
not merit  of  God.  we  shall  apply  briefly  our  text  to  the  com- 
monly-presumed instances  of  human  desert. 

You  will  find  one  man  thinking,  that,  if  he  repent,  he  shall 
be  pardoned.  In  other  words,  he  supposes  that  there  is  a  vir- 
tue in  repentance  which  causes  it  to  procure  forgiveness. 
Thus  repentance  is  exhibited  as  meritorious;  and  how  shall 
we  simply  prove  that  it  is  not  meritorious?  Why,  allowing 
that  man  can  repent  of  himself — which  he  cannot — what  is 
the  repentance  on  which  he  presumes?  What  is  there  in  it 
of  his  own  ?  The  tears  ?  they  are  but  the  dew  of  an  eye  which 
is  God's.  The  sighs?  they  are  but  the  hearings  of  a  heart 
which  is  God's.  The  resolutions?  they  are  but  the  workings 
of  faculties  which  are  God's.  The  amendment?  it  is  but  the 
better  employment  of  a  life  which  is  God's.  Where  then  is 
the  merit  ?  O,  find  something  which  is,  at  the  same  time, 
human  and  excellent  in  the  offering,  and  you  may  speak  of 
desert.  But  until  then,  away  with  the  notion  of  there  being 
merit  in  repentance,  seeing  that  the  penitent  man  must  say, 
"  All  things  come  of  thee,  and  of  thine  own,  O  God,  do  I 
give  thee." 

Again :  some  men  will  speak  of  being  justified  by  faith, 
till  they  come  to  ascribe  merit  to  faith.  "  By  faith,"  is  inter- 
preted as  though  it  meant,  on  account  of  faith ;  and  thus 
the  great  truth  is  lost  sight  of,  that  we  are  justified  freely 


IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT.  7o 

,;  through  the  redemption  that  is  in  Christ."*  But  how  can 
faith  be  a  meritorious  act  ?  What  is  faith  but  such  an  assent 
of  the  understanding'  to  God's  word  as  binds  the  heart  to 
God's  service?  And  whose  is  the  understanding,  if  it  be  not 
God's  ?  Whose  is  the  heart,  if  it  be  not  God's  ?  And  if  faith 
be  nothing  but  the  rendering  to  God  that  intellect,  and  that 
energy,  which  we  have  received  from  God,  how  can  faith 
deserve  of  God?  Oh,  as  with  repentance,  so  with  faith; 
away  with  the  notion  of  merit.  He  who  believes,  so  that  he 
can  dare  the  grave,  and  grasp  eternity,  must  pour  forth  the 
confession,  "  all  things  come  of  thee,  and  of  thine  own,  O 
God,  do  I  give  thee." 

And  once  more :  what  merit  can  there  be  in  works  ?  If 
you  give  much  alms,  whose  is  the  money?  "The  silver 
is  mine,  and  the  £old  is  mine,  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts."!  If 
you  mortify  the  body,  whose  are  the  macerated  limbs  ?  If 
you  put  sackcloth  on  the  soul,  whose  is  the  chastened  spirit? 
If  you  be  moral,  and  honest,  and  friendly,  and  generous,  and 
patriotic,  whose  are  the  dispositions  which  you  exercise, 
whose  the  powers  to  which  you  give  culture  and  scope? 
And  if  you  only  use  God's  gifts,  can  that  be  meritorious? 
You  may  say,  yes — it  is  meritorious  to  use  them  aright, 
whilst  others  abuse  them.  But  is  it  wickedness  to  abuse  ? 
Then  it  can  only  be  duty  to  use  aright ;  and  duty  will  be 
merit,  when  debt  is  donation.  You  may  bestow  a  fortune  in 
charity ;  but  the  wealth  is  already  the  Lord's.  You  may  cul- 
tivate the  virtues  which  adorn  and  sweeten  human  life ;  but 
the  employed  powers  are  the  Lord's.  You  may  give  time 
and  strength  to  the  enterprises  of  philanthropy ;  each  mo- 
ment is  the  Lord's,  each  sinew  is  the  Lord's.  You  may  be 
upright  in  every  dealing  of  trade,  scrupulously  honorable  in 
all  the  intercourses  of  life  ;  but  "  a  just  weight  and  balance 
are  the  Lord's,  all  the  weights  of  the  bag  are  his  work."! 
And  where  then  is  the  merit  of  works  ?  Oh,  throw  into  one 
heap  each  power  of  the  mind,  each  energy  of  the  body ;  use 
in  God's  service  each  grain  of  your  substance,  each  second 

♦Romans,  3  :  24.  t  Haggai,  2  :  8.  *  Proverbs,  16  :  11. 

10 


74  IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CKKATUKl.-MERir. 

of  your  time  ;  give  to  the  Almighty  every  throb  of  the  pulse, 
every  drawing  of  the  breath ;  labor  and  strive,  and  be  in- 
stant, in  season  and  out  of  season,  and  let  the  steepness  of 
the  mountain  daunt  you  not,  and  the  swellings  of  the  ocean 
deter  you  not,  and  the  rnggedness  of  the  desert  appall  you 
not,  but  on,  still  on,  in  toiling  for  your  Maker;  and  dream, 
and  talk,  and  boast  of  merit,  when  you  can  find  the  particle 
in  the  heap,  or  the  shred  in  the  exploit,  which  you  may  ex- 
clude from  the  confession,  "  all  things  come  of  thee,  and  of 
thine  oivn,  O  God,  have  I  given  thee." 

Now  we  would  trust  that  the  impossibility  of  creature- 
merit  has  thus  been  established  as  an  inference  from  the 
statement  of  our  text.  We  wish  you  thoroughly  to  perceive 
that  merit  is  inconsistent  with  creatureship.  We  do  not  mere- 
ly prove  that  this,  or  that,  order  of  being  cannot  merit.  Merit 
is  inconsistent  with  Creatureship.  A  creature  meriting  of  the 
Creator  is  an  impossibility.  When  the  archangel  can  merit, 
the  worm  may  merit.  And  he  alone  who  is  independent ;  he 
who  has  received  nothing ;  he  who  is  every  thing  to  him- 
self, as  well  as  every  thing  to  the  universe,  his  own  fountain 
of  existence,  his  own  storehouse  of  happiness,  his  own  har- 
vest of  glory ;  God  alone  can  merit,  and,  therefore,  God  alone 
could  redeem. 

We  have  now  only,  in  conclusion,  to  ask,  whether  you  will 
keep  back  from  God  what  is  strictly  his  own  ?  Will  ye  rob 
God,  and  pawn  his  time,  and  his  talents,  and  his  strength  with 
the  world  1  Will  ye  refuse  him  what,  though  it  cannot  be 
given  with  merit,  cannot  be  denied  without  ruin  ?  He  asks 
your  heart ;  give  it  him :  it  is  his  own.  He  asks  your  intel- 
lect ;  give  it  him  ;  it  is  his  own.  He  asks  your  money  ;  give 
it  him;  it  is  his  own.  Remember  the  words  of  the  apostle, 
"  Ye  are  not  your  own ;  ye  are  bought  with  a  price."*  Ye 
are  not  your  own.  Ye  are  bought,  even  if  ye  perish.  Your 
bodies  are  not  your  own,  though  you  may  enslave  them  to 
lust ;  they  are  God's,  to  be  thrown  to  the  rack.  Your  souls 
are  not  your  own,  though  you  may  hide,  and  tarnish,  and 

*  Corinthians,  6  :  20. 


IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CREATURE-MERIT.  75 

degrade  their  immortality ;  they  are  God's,  to  be  chained 
down  to  the  rock,  that  the  waves  of  wrath  may  dash  and 
break  over  them.  Oh,  we  want  you  ;  nay,  the  spirits  of  the 
just  want  you  ;  and  the  holy  angels  want  you  ;  and  the  Fa- 
ther, and  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost  want  you  ;  all  but  the 
devil  and  ruined  souls  want  you,  to  leave  off  defrauding  the 
Almighty,  and  to  give  him  Ms  own,  yourselves,  his  by  crea- 
tion, his  doubly  by  redemption.  I  must  give  God  the  body,  I 
must  give  God  the  soul.  I  give  him  the  body,  if  I  clothe  the 
tongue  with  his  praises  ;  if  I  yield  not  my  members  as  instru- 
ments of  unrighteousness  ;  if  I  suffer  not  the  fires  of  unhal- 
lowed passion  to  light  up  mine  eye,  nor  the  vampire  of  envy 
to  suck  the  color  from  my  cheek  ;  if  I  profane  not  my  hands 
with  the  gains  of  ungodliness ;  if  I  turn  away  mine  ear  from 
the  scoffer,  and  keep  under  every  appetite,  and  wrestle  with 
every  lust ;  making  it  palpable  that  I  consider  each  limb  as 
not  destined  to  corruption,  but  intended  for  illustrious  ser- 
vice, when,  at  the  trumpet-blast  of  the  resurrection,  the  earth's 
sepulchres  shall  be  riven.  And  I  give  God  the  soul,  when 
the  understanding  is  reverently  turned  on  the  investigations 
of  celestial  truth  ;  when  the  will  is  reduced  to  meek  compli- 
ance with  the  divine  will ;  and  when  all  the  affections  move 
so  harmoniously  with  the  Lord's  that  they  fasten  on  the  ob- 
jects which  occupy  his.  This  it  is  to  give  God  his  own. 
O  God  !  "  all  things  come  of  thee."  The  will  to  present  our- 
selves must  come  of  thee.  Grant  that  will  unto  all  of  us, 
that  we  may  consecrate  unreservedly  every  thing  to  thy  ser- 
vice, and  yet  humbly  confess  that  of  thine  own  alone  do  we 
give  thee. 


SERMON    IV. 


THE  HUMILIATION    OF    THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESUS. 


"  And  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he  humbled  himself,  and  became 
obedient  unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross.— Philippians,  2  :  8. 

We  have  been  spared  to  reach  once  more  that  solemn  sea- 
son at  which  our  Church  directs  specially  our  attention  to 
the  sufferings  and  death  of  the  Redeemer.  There  can  never, 
indeed,  be  the  time  at  which  the  contemplation  of  the  offer- 
ino--up  of  our  great  high  priest  is  at  all  out  of  place.    Know- 
ing the  foundation  of  every  hope,  our  thoughts  should  be 
continually  on  that  substitution  of  the  innocent  for  the  guilty 
which  was  made  upon  Calvary,  when  he  "  who  did  no  sin, 
neither  was  guile  found  in  his  month,"t  "  bare  our  sins  in 
his  own  body  on  the  tree."!    It  is  still,  however,  most  true, 
that  the  preaching  Christ  Jesus  and  him  crucified,  requires 
not,  as  it  consists  not  in,  the  perpetual  recurrence  to  the  slay- 
ino-  of  our  surety.    The  preaching  of  the  cross  is  not,  neces- 
sarily, that  preaching  which  makes  most  frequent  mention 
of  the  cross.    That  is  the  preaching  of  the  cross,  and  that  is 
the  preaching  of  Christ,  which  makes  the  crucifixion  of  the 
Son  of  God  its  groundwork  ;  which  offers  no  mercy,  and  ex- 
horts to  no  duty,  but  on  the  distinct  understanding  that  no 
mercy  could  be  obtained,  had  not  a  Mediator  purchased  it, 
no  duty  performed,  had  he  not  gained  for  us  the  power. 
But  when  the  groundwork  has  been  thoroughly  laid,  then, 

*  I  am  indebted  to  Bishop  Sherlock  for  much  assistance  in  handling  this 
and  the  following  subject. 

t  1  Peter,  2 :  22.  i  Ibid.  24. 


THE    HUMILIATION    OF    THE     MAN    CHRIST    JESUS.  77 

though  it  behoves  us  occasionally  to  refer  to  first  principles, 
and  to  examine  over  again  the  strength  of  our  basis,  it  is 
certainly  not  our  business  to  insist  continually  on  the  pre- 
sentation of  sacrifice  ;  just  as  if,  this  one  article  received, 
the  whole  were  mastered  of  the  creed  of  a  Christian. 

For  nothing  do  we  more  admire  the  services  of  our 
Church, /than  for  the  carefulness  displayed  that  there  be  no 
losing  sight  of  the  leading  doctrines  of  the  faith.  It  may  be 
said  of  the  Clergy  of  the  Church  of  England,  that  they  are 
almost  compelled  by  the  Almanac,  if  not  by  a  sense  of  the 
high  duties  of  their  calling,  to  bring  successively  before  their 
congregations  the  prominent  articles  of  Christianity.  It  is 
not  left  to  their  own  option,  as  it  comparatively  would  be  if 
they  were  not  fastened  to  a  ritual,  to  pass  a  year  without 
speaking  of  the  Crucifixion,  the  Resurrection,  and  Ascen- 
sion of  Christ,  of  the  Trinity  of  persons  in  the  Godhead,  or 
of  the  outpouring  of  the  Spirit.  If  they  be  disposed  to  keep 
any  of  these  matters  out  of  their  discourses,  the  Collects 
bring  the  omitted  doctrines  before  the  people,  and  convict 
the  pastors  of  unfaithfulness.  A  dissenting  congregation 
may  go  on  for  years,  and  never  once  be  directed  to  the  grand 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  in  Unity.  They  are  dependent  on 
their  minister.  He  may  advance  what  he  chooses,  and  keep 
back  what  he  chooses  ;  for  he  selects  his  own  lessons,  as  well 
as  his  own  texts.  An  established  congregation  is  not  thus 
dependent  on  its  minister.  He  may  be  an  Unitarian  in  his 
heart ;  but  he  must  be  so  far  a  Trinitarian  to  his  people  as  to 
declare  from  the  desk,  even  if  he  keep  silence  in  the  pulpit, 
that  "  the  Catholic  faith  is  this,  that  we  worship  one  God  in 
Trinity,  and  Trinity  in  Unity."*  And  thus,  whatever  the 
objections  which  may  be  urged  against  forms  of  prayer,  we 
cannot  but  think  that  a  country  without  a  liturgy  is  a  coun- 
try which  lies  open  to  all  the  incursions  of  heresy. 

We  obey,  then,  with  thankfulness,  the  appointment  of  our 
Church,  which  turns  our  thoughts  specially  at  particular 
times  on  particular  doctrines ;  not  at  any  season  excluding 

*  Athanasian  Creed. 


78  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

their  discussion,  but  providing  that,  at  least  once  in  the  year, 
each  should  occupy  a  prominent  place. 

We  would  lead  you,  therefore,  now  to  the  survey  of  the 
humiliation  of  the  man  Christ  Jesus,  and  thus  take  a  step  in 
that  pilgrimage  to  Gethsemane  and  Calvary  which,  at  the 
present  time,  is  enjoined  on  the  faithful. 

We  bring  before  you  a  verse  from  the  well-known  passage 
of  Scripture  which  forms  the  epistle  of  the  day,  and  which 
furnishes  some  of  our  strongest  arguments  against  those  who 
deny  the  divinity  of  Christ.  It  cannot  well  be  disputed, 
whatever  the  devised  subterfuges  for  avoiding  the  inferen- 
ces, that  St.  Paul  speaks  of  the  Mediator  in  three  different 
states  ;  a  state  of  glory,  when  he  was  "  in  the  form  of  God  ;" 
a  state  of  humiliation,  when  he  assumed  "  the  form  of  a  ser- 
vant ;"  a  state  of  exaltation,  when  there  was  "  given  him  a 
name  which  is  above  every  name."  It  is  further  evident,  that 
the  state  of  glory  preceded  the  state  of  humiliation  ;  so  that 
Christ  must  have  pre-existed  in  the  form  of  God,  and  not  have 
begun  to  exist  when  appearing  on  earth  in  the  form  of  a  ser- 
vant. Indeed  the  apostle  is  inculcating  humility,  and  en- 
forcing his  exhortation  by  the  example  of  the  Savior.  "  Let 
this  mind  be  in  you  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus."  You 
can  require,  no  proof  that  the  strength  of  this  exhortation 
lies  in  the  fact,  that  Christ  displayed  a  vast  humility  in  con- 
senting to  become  man  ;  and  that  it  were  to  take  from  it  all 
power,  and  all  meaning,  to  suppose  him  nothing  more  than 
a  man.  It  is  surely  no  act  of  humility  to  be  a  man  ;  and  no 
individual  can  set  an  example  of  humility  by  the  mere  being 
a  man.  But  if  one  who  pre-exists  in  another  rank  of  intelli- 
gence become  a  man,  then,  but  not  otherwise,  there  may  be 
humility,  and  consequently  example,  in  his  manhood. 

We  can,  however,  only  suggest  these  points  to  your  consi- 
deration, desiring  that  you  may  be  led  to  give  to  the  whole 
passage  that  attention  which  it  singularly  deserves.  We 
must  confine  ourselves  to  the  single  verse  which  we  have 
selected  as  our  text,  and  which,  in  itself,  is  so  full  of  infor- 
mation that  there  may  be  difficulty  in  giving  to  each  part 
the  requisite  notice. 


THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESUS.  79 

The  verse  refers  to  the  Redeemer  in  his  humiliation,  but 
cannot,  as  we  shall  find,  be  fairly  interpreted  without  taking 
for  granted  his  pre-existent  glory.  St.  Paul,  you  observe, 
speaks  of  Christ  as  "  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,''  and  as 
then  humbling  himself,  so  as  to  become  "  obedient  unto 
death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross."  It  will  be  well  that  we 
advance  a  few  remarks  on  the  phrase  "  found  in  fashion  as 
a  man,"  before  we  consider  that  act  of  humility  here  ascrib- 
ed to  the  Savior. 

Now  the  true  humanity  of  the  Son  of  God  is  as  funda- 
mental an  article  of  Christianity  as  his  true  divinity.  You 
would  as  effectually  demolish  our  religion  by  proving  that 
Christ  was  not  real  man,  as  by  proving  that  Christ  was  not 
real  God.  We  must  have  a  mediator  between  God  and  man  ; 
and  "  a  mediator  is  not  a  mediator  of  one,"*  but  must  par- 
take of  the  nature  of  each.  Shall  we  ever  hesitate  to  pro- 
nounce it  the  comforting  and  sustaining  thing  to  the  follow- 
ers of  Christ,  that  the  Redeemer  is,  in  the  strictest  sense, 
their  kinsman  ?  We  may  often  be  required,  in  the  exercise 
of  the  office  of  an  ambassador  from  God,  to  set  ourselves 
against  what  we  count  erroneous  doctrines  touching  the  hu- 
manity of  the  Savior.  But  shall  it,  on  this  account,  be  sup- 
posed that  we  either  underrate,  or  keep  out  of  sight,  this 
mighty  truth  of  Christianity,  that  the  Son  of  God  became  as 
truly,  and  as  literally,  man,  as  I  myself  am  man  ?  We  can- 
not, and  we  will  not,  allow  that  there  was  in  him  that  foun- 
tain of  evil  which  there  is  in  ourselves.  We  contend  that  the 
absence  of  the  fountain,  and  not  the  mere  prevention  of  the 
outbreak  of  its  waters,  is  indispensable  to  the  constitution  of 
such  purity  as  belonged  to  the  holy  child  Jesus.  But  that  he 
was  like  myself  in  all  points,  my  sinfulness  only  excepted  ; 
that  his  flesh,  like  mine,  could  be  lacerated  by  stripes,  wasted 
by  hunger,  and  torn  by  nails  ;  that  his  soul,  like  mine,  could 
be  assaulted  by  temptation,  harassed  by  Satan,  and  disquiet- 
ed under  the  hidings  of  the  countenance  of  the  Father ;  that 
he  could  suffer  every  thing  which  I  can  suffer,  except  the 

*  Galatians,  3  :  '20. 


SO  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

remorse  of  a  guilty  conscience ;  that  lie  could  weep  every 
tear  which  I  can  weep,  except  the  tear  of  repentance  ;  that 
he  could  fear  with  every  fear,  hope  with  every  hope,  and  joy 
with  every  joy,  which  I  may  entertain  as  a  man,  and  not  be 
ashamed  of  as  a  Christian  ;  there  is  our  creed  on  the  huma- 
nity of  the  Mediator.  If  you  could  once  prove  that  Christ 
was  not  perfect  man — bearing  always  in  mind  that  sinful- 
ness is  not  essential  to  this  perfectness — there  would  be  no- 
thing worth  battling  for  in  the  truth  that  Christ  was  perfect 
God :  the  only  Redeemer  who  can  redeem,  like  the  Goel 
under  the  law,  my  lost  heritage,  being  necessarily  my  kins- 
man ;  and  none  being  my  kinsman  who  is  not  of  the  same 
nature,  born  of  a  woman,  of  the  substance  of  that  woman, 
my  brother  in  all  but  rebellion,  myself  in  all  but  unholiness. 

We  are  bound,  therefore,  to  examine,  with  all  care,  ex- 
pressions which  refer  to  the  humanity  of  the  Savior,  and 
especially  those  which  may  carry  the  appearance  of  impugn- 
ing its  reality-.  Now  it  is  remarkable,  and  could  not  be  with- 
out design,  that  St.  Paul  uses  words  which  go  not  directly 
to  the  fact  of  the  reality  of  the  humanity,  but  which  might 
almost  be  thought  to  evade  that  fact.  He  does  not  broadly 
and  roundly  assert,  that  Christ  was  man.  He  takes  what,  at 
least,  may  be  called  a  circuitous  method,  and  uses  three  ex- 
pressions, all  similar,  but  none  direct.  "  Took  upon  him  the 
form  of  a  servant."  Was  made  in  the  likeness  of  men."  "  Be- 
ing found  in  fashion  as  a  man."  There  must,  we  say,  have 
been  some  weighty  reason  with  the  apostle  why  he  should, 
as  it  were,  have  avoided  the  distinct  mention  of  Christ's 
manhood,  and  have  employed  language  which,  to  a  certain 
extent,  is  ambiguous.  Why  speak  of  the  "  form  of  a  servant," 
of  the  "  likeness  of  men,"  and  of  "  being  found  in  fashion  as 
a  man,"  when  he  wished  to  convey  the  idea  that  Christ  was 
actually  a  servant,  and  literally  a  man  ? 

We  will,  first  of  all,  show  you  that  these  expressions,  how- 
ever apparently  vague  and  indefinite,  could  never  have  been 
intended  to  bring  into  question  the  reality  of  Christ's  hu- 
manity. The  apostle  employs  precisely  the  same  kind  of 
language  in  reference  to  Christ's  divinity.    He  had  before 


THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESUS.  81 

said  of  (he  Savior,  "  who  being  in  the  form  of  God?  If  then 
t;  the  likeness  of  men,"  or  "  the  form  of  a  servant,"  implied 
that  Christ  was  not  really  man,  or  not  really  a  servant,  "the 
form  of  God"  would  imply  that  he  was  not  really  God.  The 
several  expressions  must  have  a  similar  interpretation.  And 
if,  therefore,  Christ  was  not  really  man,  Christ  was  not  real- 
ly God ;  and  what  then  was  he?  Neither  man,  nor  God,  is  a 
conclusion  for  which  no  heretic  is  prepared.  All  admit  that 
he  was  God  separately,  or  man  separately,  or  God  and  man 
conjointly.  And  therefore  the  expressions,  "  form  of  God," 
"  form  of  a  servant,"  must  mean  literally  God,  and  literally  a 
servant;  otherwise  Christ  was  neither  divine  nor  human, 
but  a  phantom  of  both,  and  therefore  a  nothing.  So  that, 
whatever  St.  Paul's  reasons  for  employing  this  kind  of  ex- 
pression, you  see  at  once  that,  since  he  uses  it  alike,  whether 
in  reference  to  the  connection  of  Christ  with  divinity,  or  to 
that  with  humanity,  it  can  take  off  nothing  from  the  reality 
of  either  the  manhood,  or  the  Godhead.  If  it  took  from  one, 
it  must  take  equally  from  both.  And  thus  Christ  would  be 
left  without  any  subsistence — a  conclusion  too  monstrous  for 
that  most  credulous  of  all  things,  scepticism. 

We  are  certain,  therefore — inasmuch  as  the  alternative  is 
an  absurdity  which  waits  not  refutation — that  when  St. 
Paul  asserts  of  Christ  that  he  was  "  found  in  fashion  as  a 
man,"  he  intends  nothing  at  variance  with  the  doctrine  of 
the  real  humanity  of  the  Savior.  He  points  him  out  as  ac- 
tually man  ;  though,  for  reasons  which  remain  to  be  investi- 
gated, he  adopts  the  phrase,  "  the  fashion  of  a  man." 

Now  it  cannot,  we  think,  be  doubted  that  an  opposition  is 
designed  between  the  expressions  "  in  the  form  of  God,"  and 
"  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,"  and  that  we  shall  understand 
the  intent  of  the  latter,  only  through  possessing  ourselves  of 
that  of  the  former.  If  you  consult  your  Bibles,  you  will  per- 
ceive the  representation  of  St.  Paul  to  be,  that  it  was  "  the 
form  of  God "  of  which  Christ  emptied  himself,  or  which 
Christ  laid  aside,  when  condescending  to  be  born  of  a  wo- 
man. "  Who  being  in  the  form  of  God,  thought  it  not  rob- 
bery to  be  equal  with  God ;  but  made  himself  of  no  reputa- 
11 


82  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

Hon,  (so  we  render  it,  but  literally  it  is,  '  emptied  himself 
and  took  upon  him  the  form  of  a  servant."  It  was,  therefore, 
"  the  form  of  God"  which  Christ  laid  aside.  He  was  still 
God,  and  could  not,  for  a  lonely  instant,  cease  to  be  God„ 
But  he  did  not  appear  as  God.  He  put  from  him,  or  he  veil- 
ed, those  effulgent  demonstrations  of  Deity  which  had  com- 
manded the  homage,  and  called  forth  the  admiration  of  the 
celestial  hierarchy.  And  though  he  was,  all  the  while,  God, 
God  as  truly,  and  as  actually,  as  when,  in  the  might  of  ma- 
nifested Omnipotence,  he  filled  infinite  space  with  glorious 
masses  of  architecture,  still  he  so  restrained  the  blazings  of 
Divinity  that  he  could  not,  in  the  same  sense,  be  known  as 
God,  but  wanted  the  form  whilst  retaining  the  essence.  He 
divested  himself,  then,  of  the  form  of  God,  and  assumed,  in 
its  stead,  the  form  or  fashion  of  a  man.  Heretofore,  he  had 
both  been,  and  appeared  to  be  God.  Now  he  was  God,  but 
appeared  as  a  man.  The  very  being  who  had  dazzled  the 
heavenly  hosts  in  the  form  of  God,  walked  the  earth  in  the 
form  and  fashion  of  a  man.  Such,  we  think,  is  a  fair  account 
of  the  particular  phraseology  which  St.  Paul  employs.  The 
apostle  is  speaking  of  Christ  as  more  than  man.  Had  Christ 
been  only  man,  how  preposterous  to  say  of  him,  that  he  was 
"  found  in  fashion  as  a  man."  What  other  fashion,  what 
other  outward  appearance,  can  a  mere  man  present,  but  the 
fashion,  the  outward  appearance  of  a  man?  But  if  Christ 
were  God,  and  yet  appeared  as  man,  there  is  perfect  accu- 
racy in  the  statement  that  he  was  "  found  in  fashion  as  a 
man ;"  and  we  can  understand,  readily  enough,  how  he  who 
never  ceased,  and  could  not  cease  to  be  God,  might,  at  one 
time,  manifest  divinity  in  the  form  of  God,  and,  at  another, 
shroud  that  divinity  in  the  form  of  a  servant. 

We  would  pause  yet  a  moment  on  this  point,  for  it  is 
worth  your  closest  attention.  We  are  told  that  Christ  "emp- 
tied himself,"  so  that  "  though  he  was  rich,  yet  for  our  sakes 
he  became  poor."*  But  of  what  did  he  empty  himself?  Not 
of  his  being,  not  of  his  nature,  not  of  his  attributes.  It  must 

*  2  Corinthians,  8  :  'J. 


THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESUS.  Od 

be  blasphemous  to  speak  of  properties  of  Godhead  as  laid 
aside,  or  even  suspended.  But  Christ  "  emptied  himself"  of 
the  glories,  and  the  majesties,  to  which  he  had  claim,  and 
which,  as  he  sat  on  the  throne  of  the  heavens,  he  possessed 
in  unmeasured  abundance.  Whatsoever  he  was,  as  to  nature 
and  essence,  whilst  appearing  amongst  the  angels  in  the 
form  of  God,  that  he  continued  to  be  still,  when,  in  the  form 
of  a  servant,  he  walked  the  scenes  of  human  habitation.  But 
then  the  glories  of  the  form  of  God,  these  for  a  while  he  al- 
together abandoned.  If  indeed  he  had  appeared  upon  earth — 
as,  according  to  the  dignity  of  his  nature,  he  had  right  to 
appear— in  the  majesty  and  glory  of  the  highest,  it  might  be 
hard  to  understand  what  riches  had  been  lost  by  divinity. 
The  scene  of  display  would  have  been  changed.  But  the 
splendor  of  display  being  unshorn  and  undiminished,  the 
armies  of  the  sky  might  have  congregated  round  the  Media- 
tor, and  have  given  in  their  full  tale  of  homage  and  admira- 
tion. But,  oh,  it  was  poverty  that  the  Creator  should  be 
moving  on  a  province  of  his  own  empire,  and  yet  not  be  re- 
cognized nor  confessed  by  his  creatures.  It  was  poverty, 
that,  when  he  walked  amongst  men,  scattering  blessings  as 
he  trode,  the  anthem  of  praise  floated  not  around  him,  and 
the  air  was  often  burdened  with  the  curse  and  the  blasphe- 
my. It  was  poverty,  that,  as  he  passed  to  and  fro  through 
tribes  whom  he  had  made,  and  whom  he  had  come  down  to 
redeem,  scarce  a  solitary  voice  called  him  blessed,  scarce  a 
solitary  hand  was  stretched  out  in  friendship,  and  scarce  a 
solitary  roof  ever  proffered  him  shelter.  And  when  you  con- 
trast this  deep  and  desolate  poverty  with  that  exuberant 
wealth  which  had  been  always  his  own,  whilst  heaven  con- 
tinued the  scene  of  his  manifestations — the  wealth  of  the 
anthem-peal  of  ecstasy  from  a  million  rich  voices,  and  of  the 
solemn  bowing-down  of  sparkling  multitudes,  and  of  the 
glowing  homage  of  immortal  hierarchies,  whensoever  he 
showed  forth  his  power  or  his  purposes — ye  cannot  fail  to 
perceive,  that,  in  taking  upon  him  flesh,  the  Eternal  Son  de- 
scended, most  literally,  from  abundance  to  want ;  and  that, 
though  he  continued  just  as  mighty  as  before,  just  as  infi- 


84  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

nitely  gifted  with  all  the  stores  and  resources  of  essential 
Divinity,  the  transition  was  so  total,  from  the  reaping-in  of 
glory  from  the  whole  field  of  the  universe  to  the  receiving, 
comparatively,  nothing  of  his  revenues  of  honor,  that  we 
may  assert,  without  reserve,  and  without  figure,  that  he  who 
was  rich,  for  our  sakes  became  poor.  "  In  the  form  of  God," 
he  had  acted,  as  it  were,  visibly,  amid  the  enraptured  plau- 
dits of  angel  and  archangel,  cherubim  and  seraphim.  But 
now,  in  the  form  of  man,  he  must  be  withdrawn  from  the 
delighted  inspections  of  the  occupants  of  heaven,  and  act,  as 
powerfully  indeed  as  before,  but  mysteriously  and  invisibly, 
behind  a  dark  curtain  of  flesh,  and  on  the  dreary  platform  of 
a  sin-burdened  territory.  So  that  the  antithesis,  "  the  form 
of  God,"  and  "  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,"  marks  accurate- 
ly the  change  to  which  the  Mediator  submitted.  And  thus, 
whilst  on  our  former  showings,  there  is  no  impeachment,  in 
the  phrase,  of  the  reality  of  Christ's  humanity,  we  now  ex- 
tract from  the  description  a  clear  witness  to  the  divinity  of 
Jesus ;  and  show  you  that  a  form  of  speech  which  seems,  at 
first  si^ht,  vague  and  indefinite,  was,  if  not  rendered  una- 
voidable, yet  readily  dictated,  by  the  union  of  natures  in  the 
person  of  the  Redeemer. 

But  we  will  now  pass  on  to  consider  that  act  of  humility 
which  is  ascribed  in  our  text  to  Christ  Jesus.  "  Being  found 
in  fashion  as  a  man,  he  humbled  himself,  and  became  obe- 
dient unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross." 

Now  we  would  have  it  observed — for  some  of  the  greatest 
truths  in  theology  depend  on  the  fact — that  the  apostle  is 
here  speaking  of  what  Christ  did  after  he  had  assumed  hu- 
manity, and  not  of  what  he  did  in  assuming  humanity. 
There  was  an  act  of  humiliation,  such  as  mortal  thought 
cannot  compass,  in  the  coming  down  of  Deity,  and  his  taber- 
nacling in  flesh.  We  may  well  exclaim,  wonder,  O  heavens, 
and  be  astonished,  O  earth,  when  we  remember  that  He 
whom  the  universe  cannot  contain  did,  literally,  condescend 
to  circumscribe  himself  within  the  form  of  a  servant ;  and 
that,  in  no  figure  of  speech,  but  in  absolute,  though  myste- 


THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESUS.  85 

rious,  reality,  "  the  Word  was  made  flesh,"*  and  the  Son  of 
the  Highest  bora  of  a  pure  virgin.  We  shall  never  find  terms 
in  which  to  embody  even  our  own  conceptions  of  this  un- 
measured humiliation ;  whilst  these  conceptions  themselves 
leave  altogether  unapproached  the  boundary-lines  of  the 
wonder.  Who  can  "  by  searching  find  out  God  ?"f  Who, 
then,  by  striving  can  calculate  the  abasement  that  God 
should  become  man  ?  If  I  could  climb  to  Deity,  I  might 
know  what  it  was  for  Deity  to  descend  into  dust.  But  for- 
asmuch as  God  is  inaccessible  to  all  my  soarings,  it  can 
never  come  within  the  compass  of  my  imagination  to  tell  up 
the  amount  of  condescension  ;  and  it  will  always  remain  a 
prodigy,  too  large  for  every  thing  but  faith,  that  the  Creator 
coalesced  with  the  creature,  and  so  constituted  a  mediator. 

But  it  is  not  to  this  act  of  humiliation  that  our  text  bears 
reference.  This  was  the  humiliation  in  the  assumption  of 
humanity.  But  after  humanity  had  been  assumed,  when 
Christ  was  "  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,"  he  yet  further  hum- 
bled himself;  so  that,  over  and  above  the  humiliation  as 
God,  there  was  an  humiliation  as  man.  And  it  is  on  this  fact 
that  we  would  fasten  your  attention.  You  are  to  view  the 
Son  of  God  as  having  brought  himself  down  to  the  level  of 
humanity,  as  having  laid  aside  his  dignities,  and  taken  part 
of  the  flesh  and  the  blood  of  those  whom  he  yearned  to  re- 
deem. But  then  you  are  not  to  consider  that  the  humiliation 
ended  here.  You  are  not  to  suppose  that  whatsoever  came 
after  was  wound-up,  so  to  speak,  in  the  original  humiliation, 
and  thus  was  nothing  more  than  its  fuller  developement. 
God  humbled  himself,  and  became  man.  But  there  was  yet 
a  lower  depth  to  which  this  first  humiliation  did  not  neces- 
sarily carry  him.  "  Being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he 
humbled  himself." 

The  apostle  does  not  leave  us  to  conjecture  in  what  this 
second  humiliation  mainly  consisted.  He  represents  it  as 
submission  to  death,  "  even  the  death  of  the  cross."  So  that, 
after  becoming  [man,  it  was  "  humbling  himself"  to  yield  to 

*  St.  John,  1  :  14,  t  Job,  11  :  7. 


SG  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

that  sentence  from  which  no  man  is  exempted.  It  was 
"  humbling  himself,"  to  die  at  all ;  it  was  "  humbling  him- 
self" still  more,  to  die  ignominious]  y. 

We  will  examine  successively  these  statements,  and  the 
conclusions  to  which  they  naturally  lead. 

It  was  humility  in  Christ  to  die  at  all.  Who  then  was  this 
mysterious  man  of  whom  it  can  be  said  that  he  humbled 
himself  in  dying?  Who  can  that  man  be  in  whom  that  was 
humility,  which,  in  all  others,  is  necessity  ?  Has  there  ever 
been  the  individual  amongst  the  natural  descendants  of 
Adam,  however  rare  his  endowments  or  splendid  his  achieve- 
ments, however  illustrious  by  the  might  of  heroism,  or  en- 
deared by  the  warmth  of  philanthropy,  of  whom  we  could 
say  that  it  was  humility  in  him  to  die  ?  It  were  as  just  to 
say  that  it  was  humility  in  him  to  have  had  only  five  senses, 
as  that  it  was  humility  in  him  to  die.  The  most  exalted 
piety,  the  nearest  approaches  to  perfection  of  character,  the 
widest  distances  between  himself  and  all  others  of  the  race  ; 
these,  and  a  hundred  the  like  reasons,  would  never  induce 
us  to  give  harborage,  for  an  instant,  to  the  thought,  that  a 
man  stood  exempt  from  the  lot  of  humanity,  or  that  it  was 
left,  in  any  sense,  to  his  option  whether  or  no  he  would  die. 
And,  therefore,  if  there  be  a  strong  method  of  marking-off  a 
man  from  the  crowd  of  the  human  species,  and  of  distin- 
guishing him  from  all  who  bear  the  same  outward  appear- 
ance, in  some  mightier  respects  than  those  of  a  mental,  or 
moral  superiority,  is  it  not  the  ascribing  to  him  what  we 
may  call  a  lordship  over  life,  or  the  representing  him  as  so 
literally  at  liberty  to  live,  that  it  shall  be  humility  in  him  to 
die?  We  hold  it  for  an  incontrovertible  truth,  that,  had  St. 
Paul  said  nothing  of  the  pre-existent  glory  of  our  Mediator, 
there  would  have  been  enough  in  the  expression  of  our  text 
to  satisfy  unprejudiced  minds  that  a  mere  man,  such  as  one 
of  ourselves,  could  be  no  just  description  of  the  Lord  Christ 
Jesus.  If  it  were  humility  in  the  man  to  die,  there  must  have 
been  a  power  in  the  man  of  refusing  to  die.  If,  in  becoming 
"  obedient  unto  death,"  the  man  "  humbled  himself,"  there 
<nii  be  no  debate  that  his  dying  was  a  voluntary  act . ;  and 


THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESU8.  87 

that,  had  he  chosen  to  decline  submission  to  the  rending 
asunder  of  soul  and  body,  he  might  have  continued  to  this 
day,  unworn  by  disease,  unbroken  by  age,  the  immortal  man, 
the  indestructible  flesh.  We  can  gather  nothing  from  such 
form  of  expression,  but  that  it  would  have  been  quite  possi- 
ble for  the  Mediator  to  have  upheld,  through  long  cycles, 
undecayed  his  humanity,  and  to  have  preserved  it  staunch 
and  unbroken,  whilst  generation  after  generation  rose,  and 
flourished,  and  fell.  He  in  whom  it  was  humility  to  die,  must 
have,  been  one  who  could  have  resisted,  through  a  succes- 
sion of  ages,  the  approaches  of  death,  and  thus  have  still 
trodden  our  earth,  the  child  of  centuries  past,  the  heir  of 
centuries  to  come. 

We  plead  for  it  as  a  most  simple  and  necessary  deduction, 
and  we  deny  altogether  that  it  is  a  harsh  and  overstrained 
inference,  from  the  fact  that  the  man  Christ  Jesus  humbled 
himself  in  dying,  that  the  man  was  more  than  man,  and  that 
a  nature,  higher  than  human,  yea,  even  divine,  belonged  to 
his  person.  We  can  advance  no  other  account  of  such  an  act 
of  humility.  If  you  were  even  to  say  that  the  second  Adam 
was,  in  every  respect,  just  such  a  man  as  the  first,  ere  evil 
entered,  and,  with  it,  obnoxiousness  to  death,  you  would  in- 
troduce greater  difficulties  than  the  one  to  be  removed.  You 
may  say  that  if,  for  the  sake  of  winning  some  advantage  to 
his  posterity,  Adam,  whilst  yet  unfallen,  and  therefore,  with- 
out "  the  sentence  of  death  "*  in  his  members,  had  consented 
to  die,  he  would,  strictly  speaking,  have  humbled  himself  in 
dying ;  and  that  consequently  Christ,  supposing  him  sinless 
like  Adam,  and  therefore,  under  no  necessity  of  death,  might 
have  displayed  humility  in  consenting  to  die,  and  yet  not 
thereby  have  proved  himself  divine  as  well  as  human.  We 
are  not  disposed  to  controvert  the  statement.  So  far  as  we 
can  judge — though  we  have  some  jealousy  of  allowing  that 
a  mere  creature  can  humble  himself  in  executing  God's 
work — it  may  be  true,  that,  had  the  man  Christ  Jesus  been, 
in  every  respect,  similar  to  the  unfallen  Adam,  there  might 

*  2  Corinthians.  1  :  9. 


38  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

have  been  humility  in  his  dying}  and  yet  no  divinity  in  his 
person. 

But  then  we  strenuously  set  ourselves  against  such  a  false 
and  pernicious  view  of  the  Savior's  humanity.  We  will 
admit  that  a  Papist,  but  we  deny  that  a  Protestant  can,  with- 
out doing  utter  violence  to  his  creed,  maintain  that  in  every 
respect  Christ  resembled  the  unfallen  Adam.  The  Papist 
entertains  extravagant  notions  of  the  virgin-mother  of  our 
Lord.  He  supposes  her  to  have  been  immaculate,  and  free 
from  original  corruption.  The  Protestant,  on  the  contrary, 
withholding  not  from  Mary  due  honor  and  esteem,  classes 
her,  in  every  sense,  amongst  the  daughters  of  man,  and  be- 
lieves that,  whatever  her  superior  loveliness  of  character, 
she  had  her  full  share  of  the  pollution  of  our  nature.  Now 
it  may  consist  well  enough  with  the  Papist's  theory,  but  it  is 
wholly  at  variance  with  the  Protestant's,  to  suppose  that  the 
man  Jesus,  made  of  the  substance  of  his  mother,  had  a  hu- 
manity, like  that  of  Adam,  free  from  infirmity,  as  well  as 
from  sinful  propensity.  And  we  can  never  bring  up  the  hu- 
manity of  Christ  into  exact  sameness  with  the  humanity  of 
Adam,  without  either  overthrowing  the  fundamental  article 
of  faith,  that  the  Redeemer  was  the  seed  of  the  woman,  or 
ascribing  to  his  mother  such  preternatural  purity  as  makes 
her  own  birth  as  mysterious  as  her  son's. 

We  would  pause,  for  a  moment,  in  our  argument,  and 
speak  on  the  point  of  the  Savior's  humanity.  We  are  told 
that  Christ's  humanity  was  in  every  respect  the  same  as  our 
own  humanity ;  fallen,  therefore,  as  ours  is  fallen.  But,  Christ, 
as  not  being  one  of  the  natural  descendants  of  Adam,  was 
not  included  in  the  covenant  made  with,  and  violated  by, 
our  common  father.  Hence  his  humanity  was  the  solitary 
exception,  the  only  humanity  which  became  not  fallen  hu 
manity  as  a  consequence  on  Adam's  apostasy.  If  a  man  be  a 
fallen  man,  he  must  have  fallen  in  Adam ;  in  other  words, 
he  must  be  one  of  those  whom  Adam  federally  represented. 
But  Christ,  as  being  emphatically  the  seed  of  the  woman, 
was  not  thus  federally  represented ;  and  therefore  Christ  fell 
not,  as  we  fell,  in  Adam.    He  had  not  been  a  party  to  the 


THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESUS. 

broken  covenant,  and  thus  could  not  be  a  sharer  in  the  guil- 
ty consequences  of  the  infraction. 

But,  nevertheless,  while  we  argue  that  Christ  was  not 
what  is  termed  a  fallen  man,  we  contend  that,  since  "  made 
of  a  woman,"*  he  was  as  truly  "  man,  of  the  substance  of  his 
mother,"t  as  any  one  amongst  ourselves,  the  weakest  and 
most  sinful.  He  was  "  made  of  a  woman,"  and  not  a  new 
creation,  like  Adam  in  Paradise.  When  we  say  that  Christ's 
humanity  was  unfallen,  we  are  far  enough  from  saying  that 
his  humanity  was  the  same  as  that  of  Adam,  before  Adam 
transgressed.  He  took  humanity  with  all  those  innocent  in- 
firmities, but  without  any  of  those  sinful  propensities,  which 
the  fall  entailed.  There  are  consequences  on  guilt  which 
are  perfectly  guiltless.  Sin  introduced  pain,  but  pain  itself  is 
not  sin.  And  therefore  Christ,  as  being  "  man,  of  the  sub- 
stance of  his  mother,"  derived  from  her  a  suffering  humani- 
ty ;  but  as  "  conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost,";);  he  did  not  derive 
a  sinful.  Fallen  humanity  denotes  a  humanity  which  has 
descended  from  a  state  of  moral  purity  to  one  of  moral  im- 
purity. And  so  long  as  there  has  not  been  this  descent,  hu- 
manity may  remain  unfallen,  and  yet  pass  from  physical 
strength  to  physical  weakness.  This  is  exactly  what  we  hold 
on  the  humanity  of  the  Son  of  God.  We  do  not  assert  that 
Christ's  humanity  was  the  Adamic  humanity  ;  the  humanity, 
that  is,  of  Adam  whilst  still  loyal  to  Jehovah.  Had  this  hu- 
manity been  reproduced,  there  must  have  been  an  act  of 
creation  ;  whereas,  beyond  controversy,  Christ  was  "  made 
of  a  woman,"  and  not  created,  like  Adam,  by  an  act  of  om- 
nipotence. And  allowing  that  Christ's  humanity  was  not  the 
Adamic,  of  course  we  allow  that  there  were  consequences  of 
the  fall  of  which  it  partook.  We  divide,  therefore,  these  con- 
sequences into  innocent  infirmities,  and  sinful  propensities. 
From  both  was  Adam's  humanity  free  before,  and  with  both 
was  it  endowed  after,  transgression.  Hence  it  is  enough  to 
have  either,  and  the  humanity  is  broadly  distinguished  from 
the  Adamic.    Now  Christ  took  humanity  with  the  innocent 

*  Galatians,  4:4.        t  Athanasian  Creed.        t  Apostles'  Creed. 
12 


90  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

infirmities.  He  derived  humanity  from  Ins  inotlier.  Bone  of 
her  bone,  and  flesh  of  her  flesh,  like  her  he  could  hunger, 
and  thirst,  and  weep,  and  mourn,  and  writhe,  and  die.  But 
whilst  he  took  humanity  with  the  innocent  infirmities,  he 
did  not  take  it  with  the  sinful  propensities.  Here. Deity  in- 
terposed. The  Holy  Ghost  overshadowed  the  Virgin,  and, 
allowing  weakness  to  be  derived  from  her,  forbade  wicked- 
ness ;  and  so  caused  that  there  should  be  generated  a  sor- 
rowing and  a  suffering  humanity,  but  nevertheless  an  unde- 
nted and  a  spotless ;  a  humanity  with  tears,  but  not  with 
stains  :  accessible  to  anguish,  but  not  prone  to  offend  ;  allied 
most  closely  with  the  produced  misery,  but  infinitely  remov- 
ed from  the  producing  cause.  So  that  we  hold — and  we 
give  it  you  as  what  we  believe  the  orthodox  doctrine — that 
Christ's  humanity  was  not  the  Adamic  humanity,  that  is, 
the  humanity  of  Adam  before  the  fall;  nor  fallen  humanity, 
that  is,  in  every  respect  the  humanity  of  Adam  after  the  fall. 
It  was  not  the  Adamic,  because  it  had  the  innocent  infirmi- 
ties of  the  fallen.  It  was  not  the  fallen,  because  it  had  never 
descended  into  moral  impurity.  It  was,  therefore,  most  lite- 
rally our  humanity,  but  without  sin.  "  Made  of  a  woman," 
Christ  derived  all  from  his  mother  that  we  derive,  except 
sinfulness.  And  this  he  derived  not,  because  Deity,  in  the 
person  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  interposed  between  the  child  and 
the  pollution  of  the  parent. 

But  we  now  recur  to  the  subject-matter  of  discussion.  We 
may  consider  our  position  untouched,  that  since  a  man, 
:t  made  of  a  woman,"  humbled  himself  in  dying,  he  must 
have  had  another  nature  which  gave  him  such  power  over 
the  human,  that  he  might  either  yield  to,  or  resist,  its  infir- 
mities. Christ  took  our  nature  with  its  infirmities.  And  to 
die  is  one  of  these  infirmities,  just  as  it  is  to  hunger,  or  to 
thirst,  or  to  be  weary.  There  is  no  sin  in  dying.  It  is,  in- 
deed, a  consequence  on  sin.  But  consequences  may  be  en- 
dured without  share  in  the  cause ;  so  that  Christ  could  take 
flesh  which  had  in  it  a  tendency  to  death,  but  no  tendency 
to  sin.  It  is  not  saying  that  Christ's  flesh  was  sinful  like  our 
own,  to  say  that  it  was  corruptible  like  our  own.    There 


THE     MAN    CHRIST    JEStlS.  91 

might  be  eradicated  all  the  tendencies  to  the  doing  wrong, 
and  still  be  left  all  the  physical  entailments  of  the  wrong- 
done  by  another.  And  no  man  Can  read  the  prophecy,  "  thou 
wilt  not  leave  my  soul  in  hell,  neither  wilt  thou  suffer  thine 
Holy  One  to  see  corruption,"*  Avithout  perceiving  that  there 
was  no  natural  incorruptibility,  and,  therefore,  no  natural 
deathlessness  in  the  flesh  of  Christ  Jesus ;  for  if  the  flesh  had 
been  naturally  incorruptible,  and,  therefore,  naturally  death- 
less, how  could  God  be  represented  as  providing  that  this 
flesh  should  not  remain  so  long  in  the  grave  as  "  to  see  cor- 
ruption ?"  The  prophecy  has  no  meaning,  if  it  be  denied 
that  Christ's  body  would  have  corrupted,  had  it  continued 
in  the  sepulchre. 

We  may  assert,  then,  that  in  Christ's  humanity,  as  in  our 
own,  there  was  a  tendency  to  dissolution ;  a  tendency  result- 
ing from  entailed  infirmities  which  were  innocent,  but  in  no 
degree  from  sinfulness,  whether  derived  or  contracted.  But 
as  the  second  person  in  the  Trinity,  the  Lord  of  life  and 
glory,  Christ  Jesus  possessed  an  unlimited  control  over  this 
tendency,  and  might,  had  he  pleased,  for  ever  have  suspend- 
ed, or  for  ever  have  counteracted  it.  And  herein  lay  the  al- 
leged act  of  humility.  Christ  was  unquestionably  mortal ; 
otherwise  it  is  most  clear  that  he  could  not  have  died  at  all. 
But  it  is  to  the  full  as  unquestionable  that  he  must  have  been 
more  than  mortal ;  otherwise  death  was  unavoidable ;  and 
where  can  be  the  humility  of  submitting  to  that  which  we 
have  no  power  of  avoiding  ?  As  mere  man,  he  was  mortal. 
But  then  as  God,  the  well-spring  of  life  to  the  population  of 
the  universe,  he  could  for  ever  have  withstood  the  advances 
of  death,  and  have  refused  it  dominion  in  his  own  divine 
person.  But  "he  humbled  himself."  In  order  that  there 
might  come  down  upon  him  the  fulness  of  the  wrath-cup,  and 
that  he  might  exhaust  the  penalties  which  rolled,  like  a  sea 
of  fire,  between  earth  and  heaven,  he  allowed  scope  to  that 
liableness  to  death  which  he  might  for  ever  have  arrested  ; 
and  died,  not  through  any  necessity,  but  through  the  act  of 

*  Psalm  16  :  10. 


92  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

his  own  will ;  died,  inasmuch  as  his  humanity  was  mortal  ; 
died  voluntarily,  inasmuch  as  his  person  was  divine. 

And  this  was  humility.  If,  on  becoming  man,  he  had 
ceased  to  be  God,  there  would  have  been  no  humility  in  his 
death.  He  would  only  have  submitted  to  what  he  could  not 
have  declined.  But  since,  on  becoming  what  he  was  not,  he 
ceased  not  to  be  what  he  was,  he  brought  down  into  the 
fashion  of  man  all  the  life-giving  energies  which  appertain- 
ed to  him  as  God  ;  and  he  stood  on  the  earth,  the  wondrous 
combination  of  two  natures  in  one  person ;  the  one  nature 
infirm  and  tending  to  decay,  the  other  self-existent,  and  the 
source  of  all  being  throughout  a  crowded  immensity. 

And  the  one  nature  might  have  eternally  kept  up  the 
other  ;  and,  withstanding  the  inroads  of  disease,  and  pouring 
in  fresh  supplies  of  vitality,  have  given  undecaying  via;or  to 
the  mortal,  perpetualyouth  to  the  corruptible.  But  how  then 
could  the  Scriptures  have  been  fulfilled  ;  and  where  would 
have  been  the  expiation  for  the  sins  of  a  burdened  and  groan- 
ing creation  ?  It  was  an  act  of  humility — the  tongue,  we 
have  told  you,  cannot  express  it,  and  the  thought  cannot 
compass  it — that,  "  for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation,"  the 
Eternal  Word  consented  to  be  "  made  flesh."  God  became 
man.  It  was  stupendous  humility.  But  he  was  not  yet  low 
enough.  The  man  must  humble  himself,  humble  himself 
even  unto  death  ;  for  "  without  shedding  of  blood  is  no  re- 
mission."* And  he  did  humble  himself.  Death  was  avoid- 
able, but  he  submitted ;  the  grave  might  have  been  over- 
stepped, but  he  entered. 

It  would  not  have  been  the  working  out  of  human  re- 
demption, and  the  millions  with  whom  he  had  entered  into 
brotherhood  would  have  remained  undelivered  from  their 
thraldom  to  Satan,  had  Deity  simply  united  itself  to  huma- 
nity, and  then  upheld  humanity  so  as  to  enable  it  to  defy  its 
great  enemy,  death.  There  lay  a  curse  on  the  earth's  popu- 
lation, and  he  who  would  be  their  surety  must  do  more  than 
take  their  nature — he  must  carry  it  through  the  darkness 
and  the  tearfulness  of  the  realized  malediction.     But  what 

f   I  [ebrews,  9  :  32. 


THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESUS.  93 

else  was  this  but  a  fresh  act  of  humility,  a  new  and  unlimit- 
ed stretch  of  condescension  ?  Even  whilst  on  earth,  and 
clothed  round  with  human  flesh  and  blood,  Christ  Jesus  was 
still  that  great  "  I  am,"  who  sustains  "  all  things  by  the 
word  of  his  power,"*  and  out  of  whose  fulness  every  rank  of 
created  intelligence  hath,  from  the  beginning,  drawn  the 
elements  of  existence.  And,  therefore,  though  "  found  in 
fashion  as  a  man,"  he  was  all  along  infinitely  superior  to  the 
necessity  of  human  nature  ;  and,  being  able  to  lay  down  life 
and  to  take  it  again  at  pleasure,  was  only  subject  to  death 
because  determining  to  die.  It  was  then  humility  to  die.  It 
was  the  voluntary  submission  to  a  curse.  It  was  a  free-will 
descent  from  the  high  privilege  of  bearing  on  humanity 
through  the  falling  myriads  of  successive  generations,  and 
of  strengthening  it  to  walk  as  the  denizen  of  eternity,  whilst 
there  went  forward  unresisted,  on  the  right  hand  and  on  the 
left,  the  mowing-down  the  species.  And  when,  therefore,  you 
would  describe  the  humiliation  of  the  Son  of  God,  think  not 
that  you  have  opened  the  depths  of  abasement,  when  you 
have  shown  him  exchanging  the  throne  of  light,  and  the 
glory  which  he  had  with  the  Father,  for  a  tabernacle  of 
flesh,  and  companionship  with  the  rebel.  He  went  down  a 
second  abyss,  we  had  almost  said,  as  fathomless  as  the  first. 
From  heaven  to  earth,  who  shall  measure  it  ?  But  when  on 
earth,  when  a  man,  there  was  the  whole  precipice  of  God's 
curse,  not  one  hair-breadth  of  which  was  he  necessitated  to 
descend.  And  when,  therefore,  he  threw  himself  over  this 
precipice,  and  sank  into  the  grave,  who  will  deny  that  there 
was  a  new  and  overwhelming  display  of  condescension  ;  that 
there  was  performed  by  the  God-man,  even  as  there  had 
been  by  the  God,  an  act  of  self-humiliation  to  which  we  can 
find  no  parallel ;  and  that,  consequently,  "  being  found  in 
fashion  as  a  man,  Christ  humbled  himself,  and  became  obe- 
dient unto  death  ?" 

<  But  this  is  not  all.  You  have  not  yet  completed  the  survey 
of  the  Mediator's  humiliation. 

It  was  wonderful  self-abasement  that  lie  should  choose  to 

*  Hebrews,  1  :  3, 


94  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

die.  But  the  manner  of  the  death  makes  the  humility  a 
thousand-fold  more  apparent.  "  He  became  obedient  unto 
death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross."  We  wish  it  observed 
that  Christ  Jesus  was  not  insensible  to  ignominy  and  dis- 
grace. He  submitted  ;  but,  oh,  he  felt  acutely  and  bitterly. 
You  cannot  cause  a  sharper  pang  to  an  ingenuous  and  up- 
right mind  than  by  the  imputation  of  crime.  The  conscious- 
ness of  innocence  only  heightens  the  smart.  It  is  the  guilty 
man  who  cares  only  for  the  being  condemned — the  guiltless 
is  pierced  through  and  through  by  the  being  accused.  And 
let  it  never  be  thought  that  the  humanity  of  the  Son  of  God, 
holy  and  undefiled  as  it  was,  possessed  not  this  sensitiveness 
to  disgrace.  "  Be  ye  come  out  as  against  a  thief,  with  swords 
and  staves  ?"*  was  a  remonstrance  which  clearly  showed 
that  he  felt  keenly  the  shame  of  unjust  and  ruffianly  treat- 
ment. And,  as  if  it  were  not  humiliation  enough  to  die,  shall 
he,  with  all  this  sensitiveness  to  disgrace,  die  the  death  which 
was,  of  all  others,  ignominious ;  a  death  appropriated  to  the 
basest  condition  of  the  worst  men,  and  unworthy  of  a  free- 
man, whatever  the  amount  of  his  guiltiness?  Shall  the  sepa- 
ration of  soul  from  body  be  effected  by  an  execution  to  which 
none  were  doomed  but  the  most  wretched  of  slaves,  or  the 
most  abandoned  of  miscreants  ;  by  a  punishment,  too  inhu- 
man indeed  to  find  place  in  the  Jewish  code,  but  the  nearest 
approach  to  which,  the  hanging  up  the  dead  bodies  of  crimi- 
nals, was  held  so  infamous  and  execrable,  that  the  fearful 
phrase,  "  accursed  by  God,"  was  applied  to  all  thus  senten- 
ced and  used  ?  We  speak  of  nothing  but  the  shame  of  the 
cross ;  for  it  was  the  shame  which  gave  display  to  humility. 
And  we  are  bold  to  say,  that,  after  the  condescension  of  God 
in  becoming  man,  after  the  condescension  of  the  God-man  in 
consenting  to  die,  there  was  an  act  of  condescension,  scarce 
inferior  to  the  others,  in  that  the  death  was  "  the  death  of 
the  cross."  He  who  humbled  himself  in  dying  at  all,  hum- 
bled himself  unspeakably  more  in  dying  as  a  malefactor.  It 
would  have  been  humility,  had  he  who  was  exempt  from  the 

*.St.  Luke,  22  :  52. 


THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESUS.  95 

necessity  of  our  nature  consented  to  fall,  as  heroes  fall,  amid 
the  tears  of  a  grateful  people,  and  the  applauses  of  an  admir- 
ing world.  It  would  have  been  humility,  had  he  breathed 
out  his  soul  on  the  regal  couch,  and  far-spreading  tribes  had 
felt  themselves  orphaned.  But  to  be  suspended  as  a  spectacle 
between  heaven  and  earth  ;  to  die  a  lingering  death,  exposed 
to  the  tauntings  and  revilings  of  a  profligate  multitude— 
':  all  they  that  see  me  laugh  me  to  scorn  ;  they  shoot  out  the 
lip,  they  shake  the  head"* — to  be  "  numbered  with  the  trans- 
gressors,"t  and  expire  amid  the  derision  and  despite  of  his 
own  kinsmen  after  the  flesh — if  the  other  were  humility, 
how  shall  we  describe  this  ?  Yet  to  this,  even  to  this,  did  the 
Mediator  condescend.  "  He  endured."  says  St.  Paul,  "  the 
cross,  despising  the  shame."t  He  felt  the  shame  ;  otherwise 
there  was  nothing  memorable  in  his  bringing  himself  to 
despise  it.  He  despised  it,  not  as  feeling  it  no  evil,  but  as 
making  it  of  no  account  when  set  against  the  glorious  results 
which  its  endurance  would  effect.  For  it  was  not  only  ne- 
cessary that  he  should  die ;  it  was  also  necessary  that  he 
should  die  ignominiously.  He  must  die  as  a  criminal ;  we 
wish  you  to  observe  that.  He  was  to  die  as  man's  substitute  ; 
and  man  was  a  criminal,  yea,  the  very  basest.  So  that  death 
by  public  sentence,  death  as  a  malefactor,  may  be  said  to 
have  been  required  from  a  surety  who  stood  in  the  place  of 
traitors,  with  all  their  treason  on  his  shoulders.  The  shame 
of  the  cross  was  not  gratuitous.  It  was  not  enough  that  the 
substitute  humbled  himself  to  death  ;  he  must  humble  him- 
self to  a  shameful  death.  And  Christ  Jesus  did  this.  He 
could  say,  in  the  pathetic  words  of  prophecy,  "  I  hid  not  my 
face  from  shame  and  spitting."§  And  shall  we  doubt,  that, 
man  as  he  was,  keenly  alive  to  unmerited  disgrace,  the  in- 
dignities of  his  death  added  loathsomeness  to  the  cup  which 
he  had  undertaken  to  drink  ;  and  shall  we  not  then  confess 
that  there  was  an  humiliation  in  the  mode  of  dying,  over  and 
above  that  of  taking  flesh,  and  that  of  permitting  himself  to 

*  Psalm  2-2:1.  t  Hebrews,  12:2. 

+  Isaiah,  53  :  12.  .      §  Isaiah,  50  :  6. 


96  THE    HUMILIATION    OF 

be  mortal— so  that  the  apostle's  words  are  vindicated  in  then 
every  letter,  "  being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he  humbled 
himself,  and  became  obedient  unto  death,  even  the  death  of 
the  cross  ?" 

We  can  only,  in  conclusion,  press  on  you  the  exhortation 
of  St.  Paul :  "  Let  this  mind  be  in  you  which  was  also  in 
Christ  Jesus."  He  died  to  make  atonement,  but  he  died  also 
to  set  a  pattern.  Shall  selfishness  find  patrons  amongst  you 
when  you  have  gazed  on  this  example  of  disinterestedness  1 
Shall  pride  be  harbored,  after  you  have  seen  Deity  humbling 
himself,  and  then,  as  man,  abasing  himself,  till  there  was  no 
lower  point  to  which  he  could  descend  ?  And  all  this  for 
us ;  for  you,  for  me  ;  for  the  vile,  for  the  reprobate,  for  the 
lost  !  And  what  return  do  we  make  ?  Alas  !  for  the  neglect, 
the  contempt,  the  coldness,  the  formality,  which  he  who 
humbled  himself,  and  agonized,  and  died  the  death  of  shame 
on  our  behalf,  receives  at  our  hands.  Which  of  us  is  faith- 
fully taking'  pattern  ?  Which  of  us,  I  do  not  say,  has  master- 
ed and  ejected  pride,  but  is  setting  himself  in  good  earnest, 
and  with  all  the  energy  which  might  be  brought  to  the  work, 
to  the  wrestling  with  pride  and  sweeping  it  from  the  breast? 
Would  to  God  that  this  passion-season  may  leave  us  more 
humble,  more  self-denying,  more  disposed  to  bear  one  an- 
other's burdens,  than  it  finds  us.  Would  to  God  that  it  may 
write,  more  deeply  than  ever,  on  our  hearts,  the  doctrine 
which  is  the  alone  engine  against  the  haughtiness  and  self- 
sufficiency  of  the  fallen,  that  the  Mediator  between  earth  and 
heaven  was  "  perfect  God  and  perfect  man."*  There  must 
be  Deity  in  the  rock  which  could  bear  up  a  foundered  world. 
May  none  of  you  forget  this.  The  young  amongst  you  more 
especially,  keep  ye  this  diligently  in  mind.  I  have  lived 
much  amid  the  choicest  assemblies  of  the  literary  youth  of 
our  land,  and  I  know  full  well  how  commonly  the  pride  of 
talent,  or  the  appetite  for  novelty,  or  the  desire  to  be  singu- 
lar, or  the  aversion  from  what  is  holy,  will  cause  an  unstable 
mind  to  yield  itself  to  the  specious  sophistry,  or  the  licentious 

*  Athanasian  Creed. 


THE    MAN    CHRIST    JESUS. 


97 


effrontery,  of  sceptical  writings.  I  pray  God  that  none  of  you 
be  drawn  within  the  eddies  of  that  whirlpool  of  infidelity 
which  rends  into  a  thousand  shivers  the  noblest  barks, 
freighted  with  a  rich  lading  of  intellect  and  learning.  Be  ye 
watchful  alike  against  the  dogmas  of  an  insolent  reasoning, 
and  the  siren  strains  of  a  voluptuous  poetry,  and  the  fiend- 
like  sneers  of  reprobate  men,  and  the  polished  cavils  of 
fashionable  contempt.  Let  none  of  these  seduce  or  scare  you 
from  the  simplicity  of  the  faith,  and  breathe  blightingly  on 
your  allegiance,  and  shrivel  you  into  that  withered  and  sap- 
less thing,  the  disciple  of  a  creed  which  owns  not  divinity  in 
Christ.  If  I  durst  choose  between  poison-cups,  I  would  take . 
Deism  rather  than  Socinianism.  It  seems  better  to  reject  as 
forgery,  than,  having  received  as  truth,  to  drain  of  meaning, 
to  use,  without  reserve,  the  sponge  and  the  thumb-screw ;  the 
one,  when  passages  are  too  plain  for  controversy,  the  other, 
when  against  us  till  unmercifully  tortured.  May  you  all  see, 
that,  unless  a  Mediator,  more  than  human,  had  stood  in  the 
gap  to  stay  the  plague,  the  penalties  of  a  broken  law,  unsatis- 
fied through  eternity,  must  have  entered  like  fiery  arrows, 
and  scathed  and  maddened  each  descendant  of  Adam.  May 
you  all  learn  to  use  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement  as  the  basis 
of  hope,  and  the  motive  to  holiness.  Thus  shall  this  passion- 
season  be  a  new  starting-point  to  all  of  us  :  to  those  who  have 
never  entered  on  a  heavenward  course  ;  to  those  who  have 
entered,  and  then  loitered  ;  so  that  none,  at  last,  may  occupy 
the  strange  and  fearful  position  of  men  for  whom  a  Savior 
died,  but  died  in  vain. 


13 


SERMON    V. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE   RESURRECTION   VIEWED  IN  CONNECTION  WITH 
THAT  OF  THE  SOUL'S  IMMORTALITY. 


"  Jesus  said  unto  her,  I  am  i he  resurrection  and  the  life." — John,  11  :  25- 

There  is  perhaps  no  narrative  in  the  New  Testament 
more  deeply  interesting  than  that  of  the  raising-  of  Lazarus. 
It  was  nearly  the  last  miracle  which  Jesus  performed  whilst 
sojourning  on  earth-,  and,  as  though  intended  for  a  great  seal 
of  his  mission,  you  iind  the  Savior  preparing  himself,  with 
extraordinary  care,  for  this  exhibition  of  his  power.  He  had 
indeed  on  two  other  occasions  raised  the  dead.  The  daughter 
of  Jairus,  and  the  widow's  son  of  Nain,  had  both,  at  his  bid- 
ding, been  restored  to  life.  But  you  will  remember  that,  with 
regard  to  the  former,  Christ  had  used  the  expression,  "the 
damsel  is  not  dead,  but  sleepeth  :"*  and  that,  probably,  the 
latter  had  been  only  a  short  time  deceased  when  carried  out 
for  burial.  Hence,  in  neither  case  was  the  evidence  that 
death  had  taken  place,  and  that  the  party  was  not  in  a  trance, 
so  clear  and  decisive  that  no  room  was  left  for  the  cavils  of 
the  sceptic.  And  accordingly,  there  is  ground  of  doubt  whe- 
ther the  apostles  themselves  were  thoroughly  convinced  of 
Christ's  power  over  death ;  whether,  that  is,  they  believed 
him  able  to  recover  life  when  once  totally  and  truly  extin- 
guished. At  least,  you  will  observe,  that,  when  told  that  La- 
zarus was  actually  dead,  they  were  filled  with  sorrow ;  and 
that,  when  Christ  said  that  he  would  go  and  awaken  him 
from  sleep,  they  resolved  indeed  to  accompany  their  Master, 
but  expected  rather  to  be  themselves  stoned  by  the  Jews  than 
to  see  their  friend  brought  back  from  the  sepulchre. 

.  *  Mark,  5  :  39. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OP    THE    RESURRECTION.  99 

We  may  suppose,  therefore,  that  it  was  with  the  design 
of  furnishing  an  irresistible  demonstration  of  his  power,  that, 
after  hearing  of  the  illness  of  Lazarus,  Jesus  tarried  two  days 
in  the  place  where  the  message  had  found  him.  He  loved 
Lazarus,  and  Martha  and  Mary  his  sisters.  It  must  then 
have  been  the  dictate  of  affection  that  he  should  hasten  to 
the  distressed  family  as  soon  as  informed  of  their  affliction. 
But  had  he  reached  Bethany  before  Lazarus  expired,  or  soon 
after  the  catastrophe  had  occurred,  we  may  readily  see  that 
the  same  objection  might  have  been  urged  against  the  mira- 
cle of  restoration,  as  in  the  other  instances  in  which  the 
grave  had  been  deprived  of  its  prey.  There  would  not  have 
been  incontrovertible  proof  of  actual  death  ;  and  neither, 
therefore,  would  there  have  been  incontrovertible  proof  that 
Jesus  was  "  the  prince  of  life.*  But,  by  so  delaying  his  jour- 
ney that  he  arrived  not  at  Bethany  until  Lazarus  had  been 
four  days  dead,  Christ  cut  off  all  occasion  of  cavil,  and,  ren- 
dering it  undeniable  that  the  soul  had  been  separated  from 
the  body,  rendered  it  equally  undeniable,  when  he  had 
wrought  the  miracle,  that  he  possessed  the  power  of  re-unit- 
ing the  two. 

As  Jesus  approached  Bethany,  he  was  met  by  Martha,  who 
seems  to  have  entertained  some  indistinct  apprehension  that 
his  prevalence  with  God,  if  not  his  own  might,  rendered  pos- 
sible, even  then,  the  restoration  of  her  brother.  "  I  know 
that,  even  now,  whatsoever  thou  wilt  ask  of  God,  God  will 
give  it  thee."  This  drew  from  Jesus  the  saying,  "  thy  brother 
shall  rise  again."  The  resurrection  of  the  body  was,  at  this 
time,  an  article  of  the  national  creed,  being  confessed  by  the 
great  mass  of  the  Jews,  though  denied  by  the  Sadducees. 
Hence  Martha  had  no  difficulty  in  assenting  to  what  Jesus 
declared ;  though  she  plainly  implied  that  she  both  wished 
and  hoped  something  more  on  behalf  of  her  brother.  "  I 
know  that  he  shall  rise  again  in  the  resurrection,  at  the  last 
day."  And  now  it  was,  that,  in  order  to  obtain  a  precise  de- 
claration of  faith  in  his  power,  Jesus  addressed  Martha  in 

♦Acts,  3  :  15. 


100  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION. 

the  words  of  our  text,  words  of  an  extraordinary  beauty  and 
solemnity,  put  by  the  church  into  the  mouth  of  the  minister, 
as  he  meets  the  sorrowing  band  who  bear  a  brother,  or  a 
sister,  to  the  long  home  appointed  for  our  race.  Jesus  said 
unto  her,  "  I  am  the  resurrection,  and  the  life."  Martha  had 
expressed  frankly  her  belief  in  a  general  resurrection  ;  but 
she  seemed  not  to  associate  this  resurrection  with  Jesus  as  a 
cause  and  an  agent.  The  Redeemer,  therefore,  gathers,  as  it 
were,  the  general  resurrection  into  Himself;  and,  as  though 
asserting  that  all  men  shall  indeed  rise,  but  only  through 
mysterious  union  with  Himself,  he  declares,  not  that  he  will 
effect  the  resurrection,  summoning  by  his  voice  the  tenantry 
from  the  sepulchres,  but  that  he  is  Himself  that  resurrection  : 
"  I  am  the  resurrection,  and  the  life." 

Now  it  were  beside  our  purpose  to  follow  further  the  nar- 
rative of  the  raising  "of  Lazarus.  We  have  shown  you  how 
the  words  of  our  text  are  introduced,  and  we  shall  find,  that, 
when  detached  from  the  context,  they  furnish  material  of 
thought  amply  sufficient  for  a  single  discourse. 

It  seems  to  us,  that,  in  claiming  such  titles  as  those  which 
are  to  come  under  review,  Christ  declared  himself  the  cause 
and  the  origin  of  the  immortality  of  our  bodies  and  souls. 
In  announcing  himself  as  "  the  resurrection,"  he  must  be 
considered  as  stating  that  he  alone  effects  the  wondrous  re- 
sult of  the  corruptible  putting  on  incorruption.  In  announc- 
ing himself  as  "  the  life,"  he  equally  states  that  he  endows 
the  spirit  with  its  happiness,  yea  rather  with  its  existence, 
through  eternity.  If  Christ  had  only  termed  himself  "  the 
resurrection,"  we  might  have  considered  him  as  referring 
merely  to  the  body — asserting  it  to  be  a  consequence  on  his 
work  of  mediation  that  the  dust  of  ages  shall  again  quicken 
into  life.  But  when  He  terms  himself  also  "  the  life,"  we 
cannot  but  suppose  a  reference  to  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
so  that  this  noble  and  sublime  fact,  is,  in  some  way,  associa- 
ted with  the  achievements  of  redemption. 

We  are  accustomed,  indeed,  to  think  that  the  immortality 
of  the  soul  is  independent  on  the  atonement ;  so  that,  although 
had  there  been  no  redemption  there  would  have  been  no  re- 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION.  101 

surrection,  the  principle  within  ns  would  have  remained  un- 
quenched,  subsisting  for  ever,  and  for  ever  accessible  to  pain 
and  penalty.  We  shall  not  pause  to  examine  the  justice  or 
injustice  of  the  opinion.  We  shall  only  remark  that  the  ex- 
istence of  the  soul  is,  undoubtedly,  as  dependent  upon  God  as 
that  of  the  body;  that  no  spirit,  except  Deity  himself,  can  be 
necessarily,  and  inherently,  immortal ;  and  that,  if  it  should 
please  the  Almighty  to  put  an  arrest  on  those  momentary 
outgoings  of  life  which  flow  from  himself,  and  permeate  the 
universe,  he  would  instantly  once  more  be  alone  in  infinity, 
and  one  vast  bankruptcy  of  being  overspread  all  the  pro- 
vinces of  creation.  There  seems  no  reason,  if  we  may  thus 
speak,  in  the  nature  of  things,  why  the  soul  should  not  die. 
Her  life  is  a  derived  and  dependent  life  ;  and  that  which  is 
derived  and  dependent  may,  of  course,  cease  to  be,  at  the 
will  of  the  author  and  upholder.  And  it  is  far  beyond  us  to 
ascertain  what  term  of  being  would  have  been  assigned  to 
the  soul,  had  there  arisen  no  champion  and  surety  of  the 
fallen.  We  throw  ourselves  into  a  region  of  speculation, 
across  which  there  runs  no  discernible  pathway,  when  we 
inquire  whether  there  would  have  been  an  annihilation,  sup- 
posing there  had  not  been  a  redemption  of  man.  We  can 
only  say  that  the  soul  has  not,  and  cannot  have,  any  more 
than  the  body,  the  sources  of  vitality  in  herself.  We  can, 
therefore,  see  the  possibility,  if  not  prove  the  certainty,  that  it 
is  only  because  "  the  word  was  made  flesh/'*  and  struggled 
for  us  and  died,  that  the  human  spirit  is  unquenchable,  and 
that  the  principle,  which  distinguishes  us  from  the  brutes, 
shall  retain  everlastingly  its  strength  and  its  majesty. 

But  without  traveling  into  speculative  questions,  we  wish 
to  take  our  text  as  a  revelation,  or  announcement,  of  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul ;  and  to  examine  how,  by  joining  the 
terms,  resurrection  and  life,  Christ  made  up  what  was  want- 
ing in  the  calculations  of  natural  religion,  when  turned  on 
determining  this  grand  article  of  faith. 

Now  with  this  as  our  chief  object  of  discourse,  we  shall 
endeavor,  in  the  first  place,  to  show  briefly  the  accuracy 

*  John,   1:11 


102  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION. 

with  which  Christ  may  be  designated  "  the  Resurrection." 
We  shall  then,  in  the  second  place,  attempt  to  prove,  that 
the  resurrection  of  the  body  is  a  great  element  in  the  demon- 
stration of  "  the  life,"  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

We  begin  by  reminding  you  of  a  fact,  not  easily  overlook- 
ed, that  the  resurrection  is,  in  the  very  strictest  sense,  a  con- 
sequence on  redemption.  Had  not  Christ  undertaken  the 
suretyship  of  our  race,  there  would  never  have  come  a  time 
when  the  dead  shall  be  raised.  If  there  had  been  no  inter- 
position on  behalf  of  the  fallen,  whatever  had  become  of  the 
souls  of  men,  their  bodies  must  have  remained  under  the 
tyranny  of  death.  The  original  curse  was  a  curse  of  death 
on  the  whole  man.  And  it  cannot  be  argued  that  the  curse 
of  the  body's  death  could  allow,  so  long  as  unrepealed,  the 
body's  resurrection.  So  that  we  may  lay  it  down  as  an  un- 
disputed truth,  that  Christ  Jesus  achieved  man's  resurrec- 
tion. He  was,  emphatically,  the  Author  of  man's  resurrec- 
tion. Without  Christ,  and  apart  from  that  redemption  of  our 
nature  which  he  wrought  out  by  obedience  and  suffering, 
there  would  have  been  no  resurrection.  It  is  just  because 
the  Eternal  Son  took  our  nature  into  union  with  his  own, 
and  endured  therein  the  curse  provoked  by  disobedience, 
that  a  time  is  yet  to  arrive  when  the  buried  generations  shall 
throw  off  the  dishonors  of  corruption. 

But  we  are  ready  to  allow  that  the  proving  Christ  the 
cause,  or  the  author  of  the  resurrection,  is  not,  in  strict  truth, 
the  proving  him  that  resurrection  itself.  There  must  be  some 
broad  sense  in  which  it  holds  good  that  the  resurrection  of 
Christ  was  the  resurrection  of  all  men  ;  otherwise  it  would 
be  hard  to  vindicate  the  thorough  accuracy  of  our  text.  And 
if  you  call  to  mind  the  statement  of  St.  Paul,  "  since  by  man 
came  death,  by  man  came  also  the  resurrection  of  the  dead,"* 
you  will  perceive  that  the  resurrection  came  by  Christ,  in 
exactly  the  same  manner  as  death  had  come  by  Adam.  Now 
Ave  know  that  death  came  by  Adam  as  the  representative  of 
human  nature  ;  and  we,  therefore,  infer  that  the  resurrection 

*  1  Corinthians.  15  :  '31. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION.  1 03 

came  by  Christ  as  the  representative  of  human  nature.  Re- 
taining always  his  divine  personality,  the  second  person  of 
the  Trinity  took  our  nature  into  union  with  his  own ;  and 
in  all  his  obedience,  and  in  all  his  suffering,  occupied  this 
nature  in  the  character,  and  with  the  properties,  of  a  head. 
When  he  obeyed,  it  was  the  nature,  and  not  a  human  per- 
son which  obeyed.  When  he  suffered,  it  was  the  nature,  and 
not  a  human  person  which  suffered.  So  that,  when  he  died, 
he  died  as  our  head  ;  and  when  he  rose,  he  rose  also  as  our 
head.  And  thus — keeping  up  the  alleged  parallel  between 
Adam  and  Christ — as  every  man  dies  because  concerned  in 
the  disobedience  of  the  one,  so  he  rises  because  included  in 
the  ransom  of  the  other.  Human  nature  having  been  cruci- 
fied, and  buried,  and  raised  in  Jesus,  all  who  partake  of  this 
nature  partake  of  it  in  the  state  into  which  it  has  been 
brought  by  a  Mediator,  a  state  of  rescue  from  the  power  of 
the  grave,  and  not  of  a  continuance  in  its  dark  dishonors. 
The  nature  had  most  literally  died  in  Adam,  and  this  nature 
did  as  literally  revive  in  Christ.  Christ  carried  it  through 
all  its  scenes  of  trial,  and  toil,  and  temptation,  up  to  the 
closing  scene  of  anguish  and  death  ;  and  then  he  went  down 
in  it  into  the  chambers  of  its  lonely  slumbers ;  and  there  he 
brake  into  shivers  the  chain  which  bound  it  and  kept  it  mo- 
tionless ;  and  he  brought  it  triumphantly  back,  the  mortal 
immortalized,  the  decaying  imperishable,  and  "  I  am  the 
Resurrection  ;'  was  then  the  proclamation  to  a  wondering 
universe. 

We  trench  not,  in  the  smallest  degree,  on  the  special  pri- 
vileges of  the  godly,  when  we  assert  that  there  is  a  link 
which  unites  Christ  with  every  individual  of  the  vast  family 
of  man,  and  that,  in  virtue  of  this  link,  the  graves  of  the  earth 
shall,  at  the  last  day,  be  rifled  of  their  tenantry.  The  asser- 
tion is  that  of  St.  Paul  :  "  Forasmuch  then  as  the  children 
are  partakers  of  flesh  and  blood,  he  also  himself  likewise 
took  part  of  the  same,  that  through  death  he  might  destroy 
him  that  had  the  power  of  death."*  So  that  the  Redeemer 
made  himself  bone  of  our  bone,  and  flesh  of  our  flesh  ;  and 

*  Hebrews,  '2  :  14. 


104  rHE   DOCTRINE   OF   the   resurrection. 

he  thus  united  himself  with  every  dweller  upon  the  globe  ; 
and,  as  a  consequence  on  such  union,  that  which  he  wrought 
out  for  his  own  flesh,  he  wrought  out  for  all  flesh  ;  making, 
at  one  and  the  same  time,  and  by  one  and  the  same  act,  his 
own  immortal,  and  that  of  all  immortal.  He  was  then,  lite- 
rally, "  the  Resurrection."  His  resurrection  was  the  resur- 
rection of  the  nature,  and  the  resurrection  of  the  nature  was 
the  resurrection  of  all  men.  Oh,  it  is  an  amazing  contempla- 
tion, one  to  which  even  thought  must  always  fail  to  do  jus- 
tice !  The  first  Adam  just  laid  the  blighting  hand  of  disobe- 
dience on  the  root  of  human  nature,  and  the  countless  mil- 
lions of  shoots,  which  were  to  spring  up  and  cover  the  earth, 
were  stricken  with  corruption,  and  could  grow  only  to 
wither  and  decay.  The  second  Adam  nurtured  the  root  in 
righteousness,  and  watered  it  with  blood.  And,  lo  !  a  vivify- 
ing sap  went  up  into  every,  the  most  distant,  branch  ;  and 
over  this  sap  death  wields  no  power  ;  for  the  sap  goes  down 
with  the  branch  into  the  bosom  of  the  earth,  and,  at  God's 
appointed  time,  shall  quicken  it  afresh,  and  cause  it  to  arise 
indestructible  through  eternity.  It  would  be  quite  inconsist- 
ent with  the  resurrection  of  the  nature — and  this  it  is,  you 
observe,  which  makes  Christ  "  the  Resurrection  " — that  any 
individual,  partaking  that  nature,  should  continue  for  ever 
cased  up  in  the  sepulchre.  And  if  there  never  moved  upon 
this  earth  beings  who  gave  ear  to  the  tidings  of  salvation  ;  if 
the  successive  generations  of  mankind,  without  a  lonely  ex- 
ception, laughed  to  scorn  the  proffers  of  mercy  and  forgive- 
ness ;  still  this  desperate  and  unvarying  infidelity  would 
have  no  effect  on  the  resurrection  of  the  species.  The  bond 
of  flesh  is  not  to  be  rent  by  any  of  the  acts  of  the  most  daring 
rebellion.  And  in  virtue  of  this  union,  sure  as  that  the  Medi- 
ator rose,  sure  as  that  he  shall  return  and  sit,  in  awful  pomp, 
on  the  judgment-seat,  so  sure  is  it  that  the  earth  shall  yet 
heave  at  every  pore  ;  and  that,  even  had  it  received  in  de- 
posit the  bodies  of  none  save  the  unrighteous  and  the  infidel, 
it  would  give  up  the  dust  with  a  most  faithful  accuracy  ; 
so  that  the  buried  would  arise,  imperishable  in  bone  and 
sinew  ;  and  the  despisers  of  Christ,  being  of  one  flesh  with 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION.  105 

him,  must  share  in  the  resurrection  of  that  flesh,  though,  not 
being  of  one  spirit,  they  shall  have  no  part  in  its  glorifi- 
cation. 

You  see,  then,  that  Christ  is  more  than  the  efficient  cause 
of  the  resurrection  ;  that  he  is  the  resurrection  :  "  I  am  the 
Resurrection."  And  we  cannot  quit  this  portion  of  our  sub- 
ject without  again  striving  to  impress  upon  you  the  august- 
ness  and  sublimity  of  the  ascertained  fact.  The  untold  myri- 
ads of  our  lineage  rose  in  the  resurrection  of  the  new  Head  of 
our  race.  Never,  oh  never,  would  the  sheeted  reliques  of 
mankind  have  walked  forth  from  the  vaults  and  the  church- 
yards ;  never  from  the  valley  and  the  mountain  would  there 
have  started  the  millions  who  have  fallen  in  the  battle-tug ; 
never  would  the  giant-caverns  of  the  unfathomed  ocean  have 
yielded  up  the  multitudes  who  were  swept  from  the  earth 
when  its  wickedness  grew  desperate,  or  whom  stranded 
navies  have  bequeathed  to  the  guardianship  of  the  deep  ; 
never  would  the  dislocated  and  decomposed  body  have 
shaken  off  its  dishonors,  and  stood  out  in  strength  and  in 
symmetry,  bone  coming  again  to  bone,  and  sinews  binding 
them,  and  skin  covering  them — had  not  He,  who  so  occupi- 
ed the  nature  that  he  could  act  for  the  race,  descended,  in  his 
prowess  and  his  purity,  into  the  chambers  of  death,  and  scat- 
tering the  seeds  of  a  new  existence  throughout  their  far- 
spreading  ranges,  abandoned  them  to  gloom  and  silence  till 
a  fixed  and  on-coming  day ;  appointing  that  then  the  seeds 
should  certainly  germinate  into  a  rich  harvest  of  undying 
bodies,  and  the  walls  of  the  chambers,  falling  flat  at  the 
trumpet-blast  of  judgment,  disclose  the  swarming  armies  of 
the  buried  marching  onward  to  the  "  great  white  throne."* 

But  we  shall  not  dwell  longer  on  the  fact  that  Christ  Jesus 
is  "  the  Resurrection."  Our  second  topic  of  discourse  pre- 
sents most  of  difficulty  ;  and  we  shall,  therefore,  give  it  the 
remainder  of  our  time. 

We  wish  to  take  our  text  as  an  announcement  of  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul,  and  to  examine  how,  by  joining  the 

*  Revelation,  20:11. 
14 


10b  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION, 

terms  resurrection  and  life,  Christ  supplied  what  was  want- 
ing in  the  calculations  of  natural  religion.  Now  we  hold  no 
terms  with  those,  who,  through  an  overwrought  zeal  for  the 
honor  of  the  Gospel,  would  depreciate  the  smugglings  after 
knowledge  which  characterized  the  days  preceding  Christi- 
anity. There  arose,  at  times,  men,  gifted  above  their  fellows, 
who  threw  themselves  boldly  into  the  surrounding  darkness, 
and  brought  out  sparklings  of  truth  which  they  showed  to  a 
wondering,  yet  doubting,  world.  Thus  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  was  certainly  held  by  sundry  of  the  ancient  philo- 
sophers. And  though  there  might  be  much  error  compound- 
ed with  truth,  and  much  feebleness  in  the  notions  entertain- 
ed of  spiritual  subsistence,  it  was  a  great  triumph  on  the  part 
of  the  soul,  that  she  did  at  all  shake  off  the  trammels  of  flesh, 
and,  soaring  upwards,  snatch  something  like  proof  of  her 
own  high  destinies.  ' 

We  believe  that  amongst  those  who  enjoyed  not  the  ad- 
vantages of  revelation  there  was  no  suspicion  of  a  resurrec- 
tion, but  there  was,  at  least,  a  surmise  of  life.  We  say  a  sur- 
mise of  life.  For  if  you  examine  carefully  the  limit  to  which 
unaided  discovery  might  be  pushed,  you  will  find  cause  to 
think  that  a  shrewd  guess,  or  a  brilliant  conjecture,  is  the 
highest  attainment  of  natural  religion.  That  mere  matter 
can  never  have  consciousness :  that  mere  matter  can  never 
feel ;  that,  by  no  constitution  and  adjustment  of  its  atoms, 
can  mere  matter  become  capable  of  acts  of  understanding 
and  reason  ;  we  can  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  these 
are  self-evident  truths  of  which  no  candid  mind  will  ask  a 
demonstration.  The  mind  is  its  own  witness  that  it  is  some- 
thing more  than  matter.  And  when  men  have  thus  proved 
themselves  in  part  immaterial,  they  have  made  a  long  ad- 
vance towards  proving  themselves  immortal.  They  have 
ascertained,  at  least,  the  existence  of  a  principle,  which,  not 
being  matter,  will  not  necessarily  be  affected  by  the  dissolu- 
tion of  matter.  And  having  once  determined  that  there  is  a 
portion  of  man  adapted  for  the  soaring  away  from  the  ruins 
of  matter,  let  attention  be  given  to  the  scrutiny  of  this  por- 
tion, and  it.  will  be  found  so  capable  of  noble  performances, 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE     RESURRECTION,  107 

so  fitted  for  the  contemplation  of  things  spiritual  and  divine, 
that  it  shall  commend  itself  to  the  inquirer  as  destined  to  the 
attainments  of  a  loftier  existence.  So  that  we  are  certain 
upon  the  point  that  man  might  prove  himself  in  part  imma- 
terial, and,  therefore,  capable  of  existence  when  separate 
from  matter.  And  we  are  persuaded  yet  further,  that,  hav- 
ing shown  himself  capable  of  a  future  existence,  he  might 
also  show  himself  capable  of  an  immortal ;  there  being  am- 
ple reason  on  the  side  of  the  opinion,  that  the  principle, 
which  could  survive  at  all,  might  go  on  surviving  for  ever. 

Now  this  is  a  brief  outline  of  the  argument  which  might 
be  pursued  for  the  soul's  immortality.  Man  might  reason  up 
from  matter  as  insensible  to  himself  as  sensible.  He  might 
conclude,  that,  since  what  is  wholly  material  can  never 
think,  he  himself,  as  being  able  to  think,  must  be,  in  part, 
immaterial.  And  the  moment  he  has  made  out  the  point  of 
an  immaterial  principle  actuating  matter,  he  may  bring  to 
bear  a  vast  assemblage  of  proofs,  derived  alike  from  the  as- 
pirings of  this  principle  and  the  attributes  of  God,  all  con- 
firmatory of  the  notion,  that  the  immaterial  shall  survive 
when  the  material  has  been  worn  down  and  sepulchred. 

But  we  think  that  when  a  man  had  reasoned  up  to  a  ca- 
pacity of  immortality,  he  would  have  reached  the  furthest 
possible  point.  We  think  that  natural  religion  could  just 
show  him  that  he  might  live  for  ever,  but  certainly  not  that 
he  would  live  for  ever.  He  might  have  been  brought  into  a 
persuasion  that  the  principle  within  him  was  not  necessari- 
ly subject  to  death.  But  he  could  not  have  assured  himself 
that  God  would  not  consign  this  principle  to  death.  It  is  one 
thing  to  prove  a  principle  capable  of  immortality,  and  quite 
another  to  prove  that  God  will  allow  it  to  be  immortal.  And 
if  man  had  brought  into  the  account  the  misdoings  of  his 
life  ;  if  he  had  remembered  how  grievously  he  had  permitted 
the  immaterial  to  be  the  slave  of  the  material,  giving  no 
homage  to  the  ethereal  and  magnificent  principle,  but  bind- 
ing it  basely  down  within  the  frame-work  of  flesh ;  why,  we 
may  suppose  there  would  have  come  upon  him  the  fear,  we 
had  almost  said  the  hope,  that,  by  an  act  of  omnipotence 


108  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION. 

God  would  terminate  the  existence  of  that  which  might 
have  been  everlasting,  and,  sending  a  cankerworm  into  the 
long-dishonored  germ,  forbid  the  soul  to  shoot  upwards  a 
plant  of  immortality. 

So  that  we  again  say  that  a  capacity,  but  not  a  certainty 
of  immortality,  would  be,  probably,  the  highest  discovery 
arrived  at  by  natural  religion.  And  just  here  it  was  that  the 
Gospel  came  in,  and  bringing  man  tidings  from  the  Father 
of  spirits,  informed  him  of  the  irrevocable  appointment  that 
the  soul,  like  the  Deity  of  which  it.is  the  spark,  shall  go  not 
out  and  wax  not  dim.  Revealed  religion  approached  as  the 
auxiliary  to  natural,  and,  confirming  all  its  discoveries  of 
man's  capacity  of  immortality,  removed  all  doubts  as  to  his 
destinies  being  everlasting.  And  thus  it  were  fair  to  contend, 
that,  up  to  the  coming  of  Christ,  man  had  done  nothing 
more  than  carry  himself  to  the  border-line  of  eternity;  and 
that  there  he  stood,  a  disembodied  spirit,  full  of  the  amazing 
consciousness,  that,  if  permitted  to  spring  into  the  unbound- 
ed expanse,  he  should  never  be  mastered  by  the  immensity 
of  flight;  but  hampered,  all  the  while,  by  the  suspicion  that 
there  might  go  out  against  him  a  decree  of  the  Omnipotent, 
binding  down  the  wings  of  the  soul,  and  forbidding  this  ex- 
piation over  the  for  ever  and  for  ever  of  Godhead.  So  that 
the  Gospel,  though  it  taught  not  man  that  he  might  be,  as- 
suredly did  teach  him  that  he  should  be  immortal.  It  brought 
him  not  the  first  tidings  of  an  immaterial  principle,  but,  cer- 
tainly, it  first  informed  him  that  nothing  should  interfere 
with  the  immaterial  becoming  the  eternal. 

Now  you  will  observe  that  it  has  been  the  object  of  these 
remarks,  to  prove  that  natural  religion  did  much,  and  at  the 
same  time  left  much  undone,  in  regard  to  the  disclosures  of 
a  future  state  to  man.  We  have  striven,  therefore,  to  show 
you  a  point  up  to  which  discovery  might  be  pushed  without 
aid  from  revelation,  but  at  which,  if  not  thus  assisted,  it 
must  come  necessarily  to  a  stand.  And  now,  if  you  would 
bring  these  statements  into  connection  with  our  text,  we  may 
again  say  that  natural  religion  had  a  surmise  of  life,  but  no 
suspicion  of  a  resurrection,  that  if  Christ  had  onlv  said  "I 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION.  109 

am  the  life,"  he  would  have  left  in  darkness  and  perplexity 
the  question  of  the  soul's  immortality  ;  but  that  by  combin- 
ing two  titles,  by  calling-  himself  "  the  resurrection  and  the 
life,"  he  removed  the  difficulties  from  that  question,  and 
brought  to  light  the  immortality.  We  wish  you  to  be  clear 
on  this  great  point.  We  shall,  therefore,  examine  how  natu- 
ral religion  came  to  be  deficient,  and  how  the  statement  of 
our  text  supplied  what  was  wanting. 

Now  we  see  no  better  method  of  prosecuting  this  inquiry, 
than  the  putting  one's-self  into  the  position  of  a  man  who  has 
no  guidance  but  that  of  natural  religion.  If  there  had  never 
shone  on  me  the  beams  of  the  Gospel,  and  if  I  could  only 
gather  my  arguments  from  what  I  felt  within  myself,  and 
from  what  I  saw  occurring  around  me,  I  might  advance, 
step  by  step,  through  some  such  process  as  the  following.  I 
am  not  wholly  a  material  thing.  I  can  perceive,  and  reason, 
and  remember.  I  am  conscious  to  myself  of  powers  which  it 
is  impossible  that  mere  matter,  however  wrought  up  or 
moulded,  could  possess  or  exercise.  There  must,  then,  be 
within  me  an  immaterial  principle,  a  something  which  is  not 
matter,  a  soul,  an  invisible,  mysterious,  powerful,  pervading 
thing.  And  this  soul,  I  feel  that  it  struggles  after  immortality. 
I  feel  that  it  urges  me  to  the  practice  of  virtue,  however 
painful,  and  that  it  warns  me  against  the  pursuit  of  vice, 
however  pleasant.  I  feel  that  it  acts  upon  me  by  motives, 
derived  from  the  properties  of  a  God,  but  which  lose  all  their 
point  and  power,  unless  I  am  hereafter  to  be  judged  and 
dealt  with  according  to  my  actions.  And  if  natural  religion 
have  thus  enabled  me,  at  the  least,  to  conjecture  that  there 
shall  come  a  judgment,  and  a  state  of  retribution,  what  is  it 
which  puts  an  arrest  on  my  searchings,  and  forbids  my  going- 
onward  to  certainty  ?  We  reply  without  hesitation,  death. 
Natural  religion  cannot  overleap  the  grave.  It  is  just  the 
fact  of  the  body's  dissolution,  of  the  taking  down  of  this 
fleshly  tabernacle,  of  the  resolution  of  bone,  and  flesh,  and 
sinew  into  dust — it  is  just  this  fact  which  shakes  all  my  cal- 
culations of  a  judgment,  and  throws  a  darkness,  not  to  be 


110  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION. 

penetrated,  round  "  life  and  immortality."*  And  why  so  ? 
Why,  alter  showing  that  I  am  immaterial — why,  after  prov- 
ing- that  a  part  of  myself  spurns  from  it  decay,  and  is  not 
necessarily  affected  by  the  breaking-up  of  the  body — why 
should  death  interfere  with  my  conviction  of  the  certainties 
of  judgment  and  retribution?  We  hold  the  reason  to  be  sim- 
ple and  easily  defined.  If  there  shall  come  a  judgment,  of 
course  the  beings  judged  must  be  the  very  beings  who  have 
lived  on  this  earth.  If  there  shall  come  a  retribution,  of 
course  the  beings  rewarded  or  punished  must  be  the  very 
beings  who  have  been  virtuous  or  vicious  in  this  present  ex- 
istence'. There  can  be  nothing  clearer  than  that  the  indivi- 
duals judged,  and  the  individuals  recompensed,  must  be  the 
very  individuals  who  have  here  moved  and  acted,  the  sons 
and  the  daughters  of  humanity.  But  how  can  they  be?  The 
soul  is  not  the  man.  There  must  be  the  material,  as  well  as 
the  immaterial,  to  make  up  man.  The  vicious  person  cannot 
be  the  suffering  person,  and  the  virtuous  person  cannot  be  the 
exalted  person,  and  neither  can  be  the  tried  person,  unless 
body  and  soul  stand  together  at  the  tribunal,  constituting 
hereafter  the  very  person  whicji  they  constitute  here.  And 
if  natural  religion  know  nothing  of  a  resurrection — and  it 
does  know  nothing,  the  resurrection  being  purely  an  article 
of  revelation — we  hold  that  natural  religion  must  here  be 
thrown  out  of  all  her  calculations,  and  that  confusion  and 
doubt  will  be  the  result  of  her  best  searchings  after  truth. 

I  see  that  if  there  be  a  judgment  hereafter,  the  individuals 
judged  must  be  the  very  individuals  who  have  obeyed  here, 
or  disobeyed  here.  But  if  the  material  part  be  dissolved,  and 
there  remain  nothing  but  the  immaterial,  they  are  not,  and 
they  cannot  be,  the  very  same  individuals.  The  soul,  we 
again  say,  is  not  the  man.  And  if  the  soul,  by  itself,  stand  in 
judgment,  it  is  not  the  man  who  stands  in  judgment.  And 
if  the  man  stand  not  in  judgment,  there  is  no  putting  of  the 
obedient,  or  the  offending  being  upon  trial.  So  that  there  is 
at  once  an  overthrow  of  the  reasoning  by  which  I  had  sus- 

*  2  Timothy,  1  :  10. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION.  Ill 

tamed  the  expectation,  that  the  future  comes  charged  with 
the  actings  of  a  mighty  jurisdiction.  I  cannot  master  the 
mysteries  of  the  sepulchre.  I  may  have  sat  down  in  one  of 
the  solitudes  of  nature  ;  and  I  may  have  gazed  on  a  firma- 
ment and  a  landscape  which  seemed  to  burn  with  divinity; 
and  I  may  have  heard  the  whisperings  of  a  more  than  human 
voice,  telling  me  that  I  am  destined  for  companionship  with 
the  bright  tenantry  of  a  far  lovelier  scene;  and  I  may  then 
have  pondered  on  myself:  there  may  have  throbbed  within 
me  the  pulses  of  eternity;  I  may  have  felt  the  soarings  of 
the  immaterial,  and  I  may  have  risen  thrilling  with  the 
thought  that  I  should  yet  find  myself  the  immortal.  But  if, 
when  I  went  forth  to  mix  again  with  my  fellows— the 
splendid  thought  still  crowding  every  chamber  of  the  spirit — 
I  met  the  spectacle  of  the  dead  borne  along  to  their  burial ; 
why,  this  demonstration  of  human  mortality  would  be  as  a 
thunder-cloud  passing  over  my  brilliant  contemplations  ;  and 
I  should  not  know  how  to  believe  myself  reserved  for  end- 
less allotments,  when  I  saw  one  of  my  own  lineage  coffined 
and  sepulchred.  How  can  this  buried  man  be  judged  ?  How 
can  he  be  put  upon  trial  1  His  soul  may  be  judged,  his  soul 
may  be  put  upon  trial.  But  the  soul  is  not  himself.  And  if  it 
be  not  himself  who  is  judged,  judgment  proceeds  not  accord- 
ing to  the  rigors  of  justice,  and,  therefore,  not  according  to 
the  attributes  of  Deity. 

And  thus  the  grand  reason  why  natural  religion  cannot 
fully  demonstrate  a  judgment  to  come,  and  a  state  of  retri- 
bution, seems -to  be  that  it  cannot  demonstrate,  nay  rather, 
that  it  cannot  even  suspect,  the  resurrection  of  the  body. 
The  great  difficulty,  whilst  man  is  left  to  discover  for  him- 
self, is  how  to  bring  upon  the  platform  of  the  future  the  iden- 
tical beings  who  are  shattered  by  death.  So  that  unless  you 
introduce  "  the  resurrection,"  you  will  not  make  intelligible 
"  the  life."  The  showing  that  the  body  will  rise  is  indispen- 
sable to  the  showing,  not  indeed  that  the  soul  is  capable  of 
immortality,  but  that  her  immortality  can  consist,  as  it  must 
consist,  with  judgment  and  retribution.  We  contend,  there- 
fore, that  the  great  clearing-up  of  the  soul's  immortality  was 


112  IHt    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION', 

Christ's  combining  the  titles  of  our  text,  "  I  am  the  resurrec- 
tion and  the  life."  Let  man  be  assured  that  his  body  shall 
rise,  and  there  is  an  end  to  those  difficulties  which  throng 
around  him  when  observing  that  his  body  must  die.  Thus 
it  was  "  the  resurrection"  which  turned  a  flood  of  brightness 
on  :i  the  life."  The  main  thing  wanted,  in  order  that  men 
might  be  assured  of  immortality,  was  a  grappling  with  death. 
It  was  the  showing  that  there  should  be  no  lasting  separation 
between  soul  and  body.  It  was  the  exhibiting  the  sepulchres 
emptied  of  their  vast  population,  and  giving  up  the  dust  re- 
moulded into  human  shape.  And  this  it  was  which  the  Me- 
diator effected,  not  so  much  by  announcement  as  by  action, 
not  so  much  by  preaching  resurrection  and  life,  as  by  being 
"  the  resurrection  and  the  life."  He  went  down  to  the  grave 
in  the  weakness  of  humanity,  but,  at  the  same  time,  in  the 
might  of  Deity.  And,  designing  to  pour  forth  a  torrent  of 
lustre  on  the  life,  the  everlasting  life  of  man,  oh,  he  did  not 
bid  the  firmament  cleave  asunder,  and  the  constellations  of 
eternity  shine  out  in  their  majesties,  and  dazzle  and  blind  an 
overawed  creation.  He  rose  up,  a  moral  giant,  from  his  grave- 
clothes  ;  and,  proving  death  vanquished  in  his  own  strong- 
hold, left  the  vacant  sepulchre  as  a  centre  of  light  to  the 
dwellers  on  this  planet.  He  took  not  the  suns  and  systems 
which  crowd  immensity  in  order  to  form  one  brilliant  cata- 
ract, which,  rushing  down  in  its  glories,  might  sweep  away 
darkness  from  the  benighted  race  of  the  apostate.  But  he 
came  forth  from  the  tomb,  masterful  and  victorious  ;  and  the 
place  where  he  had  lain  became  the  focus  of  the  rays  of  the 
long-hidden  truth ;  and  the  fragments  of  his  grave-stone 
were  the  stars  from  which  flashed  the  immortality  of  man. 
It  was  by  teaching  men  that  they  should  rise  again,  it  was 
by  being  himself  "  the  resurrection,"  that  he  taught  them 
they  should  live  the  life  of  immortality.  This  was  bringing 
the  missing  element  into  the  attempted  demonstration  ;  for 
this  was  proving  that  the  complete  man  shall  stand  to  be 
judged  at  the  judgment-seat  of  God.  And  thus  it  is,  we 
again  say,  that  the  combination  of  titles  in  our  text  makes 
the  passage  an  intelligible  revelation  of  the  soul's  immortali- 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    TIIE    RESURRECTION.  113 

ty.  And  prophets  might  have  stood  upon  the  earth,  proclaim- 
ing to  the  nations  that  every  individual  carried  within  him- 
self a  principle  imperishable  and  unconquerable  ;  they  might 
have  spoken  of  a  vast  and  solemn  scene  of  assize ;  and  they 
might  have  conjured  men  by  the  bliss  and  the  glory,  the  fire 
and  the  shame,  of  never-ending  allotments :  but  doubt  and 
uncertainty  must  have  overcast  the  future,  unless  they  could 
have  bidden  their  audience  anticipate  a  time  when  the  whole 
globe,  its  mountains,  its  deserts,  its  cities,  its  oceans,  shall 
seem  resolved  into  the  elements  of  humankind  ;  and  millions 
of  eyes  look  up  from  a  million  chasms ;  and  long-severed 
spirits  rush  down  to  the  very  tenements  which  encased 
them  in  the  days  of  probation  :  aye,  prophets  would  have 
spoken  in  vain  of  judgment  and  immortality,  unless  they 
could  have  told  out  this  marvelous  leaping  into  life  of  what- 
soever hath  been  man  ;  and  never  could  the  cloud  and  the 
mist  have  been  rolled  away  from  the  boundless  hereafter, 
had  there  not  arisen  a  being  who  could  declare,  and  make 
good  the  declaration,  "  I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life." 
Now  we  have  been  induced  to  treat  on  the  inspiriting  words 
of  our  text  by  the  consideration  that  death  has,  of  late,  been 
unusually  busy  in  our  metropolis  and  its  environs,  and  that, 
therefore,  such  a  subject  of  address  seemed  peculiarly  calcu- 
lated to  interest  your  feelings.  We  thank  thee,  and  we  praise 
thee,  O  Lord  our  Redeemer,  that  thou  hast  "  abolished 
death."*  We  laud  and  magnify  thy  glorious  name,  that  thou 
hast  wrestled  with  our  tyrant  in  the  citadel  of  his  empire  ; 
and  that,  if  we  believe  upon  thee,  death  has,  for  us,  been 
spoiled  of  its  power,  so  that,  "  O  death  where  is  thy  sting,  O 
grave  where  is  thy  victory ,"t  may  burst  from  our  lips  as  we 
expect  the  dissolution  of  "  our  earthly  house  of  this  taber- 
nacle."! What  is  it  but  sin,  unpardoned  and  wrath-deserving 
sin,  which  gives  death  its  fearfulness?  It  is  not  the  mere 
separation  of  soul  from  body,  though  we  own  this  to  be 
awful  and  unnatural,  worthy  man's  abhorrence,  as  causing 

*  2  Timothy,  1  :  10.  +1  Corinthians,  15  :  55. 

J  2  Corinthians,  5:1. 

15 


114  THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION. 

him,  for  a  while,  to  cease  to  be  man.  It  is  not  the  reduction 
of  this  flesh  into  original  elements,  earth  to  earth,  fire  to  fire, 
water  to  water,  which  makes  death  so  terrible,  compelling 
the  most  stout-hearted  to  shrink  back  from  his  approaches. 
It  is  because  death  is  a  consequence  of  sin,  and  this  one  con- 
sequence involves  others  a  thousand-fold  more  tremendous — 
a  sea  of  anger,  and  waves  of  fire,  and  the  desperate  anguish 
of  a  storm-tossed  spirit — it  is  on  this  account  that  death  is 
appalling  :  and  they  who  could  contentedly,  and  even  cheer- 
fully, depart  from  a  world  which  has  mocked  them,  and  de- 
ceived them,  and  wearied  them,  oh,  they  cannot  face  a  God 
whom  they  have  disobeyed,  and  neglected,  and  scorned. 

And  if,  then,  there  be  the  taking  away  of  sin  ;  if  iniquity 
be  blotted  out  as  a  cloud,  and  transgression  as  a  thick  cloud  : 
is  not  all  its  bitterness  abstracted  from  death  ?  And  if,  yet 
further,  in  addition  to  the  pardon  of  sin,  there  have  been  im- 
parted to  man  a  "  right  to  the  tree  of  life,"*  so  that  there  are 
reserved  for  him  in  heaven  the  splendors  of  immortality ;  is 
not  the  terrible  wrenched  away  from  death  ?  But  is  not  sin 
pardoned  through  the  blood-shedding  of  Jesus ;  and  is  not 
glory  secured  to  us  through  the  intercession  of  Jesus  ?  And 
where  then  is  the  tongue  bold  enough  to  deny,  that  death  is 
virtually  abolished  unto  those  who  believe  on  "  the  resur- 
rection and  the  life?"  Oh,  the  smile  can  rest  brightly  on  a 
dying  man's  cheek,  and  the  words  of  rapture  can  flow  from 
his  lips,  and  his  eye  can  be  on  angel  forms  waiting  to  take 
charge  of  his  spirit,  and  his  ear  can  catch  the  minstrelsy  of 
cherubim ;  and  what  are  these  but  trophies— conquerors  of 
earth,  and  statesmen,  and  philosophers,  can  ye  match  these 
trophies? — of  "  the  resurrection  and  the  life?" 

We  look  not,  indeed,  always  for  triumph  and  rapture  on 
the  death-beds  of  the  righteous.  We  hold  it  to  be  wrong  to 
expect,  necessarily,  encouragement  for  ourselves  from  good 
men  in  the  act  of  dissolution.  They  require  encouragement. 
Christ,  when  in  his  agony,  did  not  strengthen  others :  he 
needed  an  angel  to  strengthen  himself.   But  if  there  be  not 

*  Revelation,  22  ;  14. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION.  115 

ecstacy,  there  is  that  composedness,  in  departing  believers, 
which  shows  that  "  the  everlasting  arms  "*  are  under  them 
and  around  them.  It  is  a  beautiful  thing  to  see  a  Christian 
die.  The  confession,  whilst  there  is  strength  to  articulate, 
that  God  is  faithful  to  his  promises  ;  the  faint  pressure  of  the 
hand,  giving  the  same  testimony  when  the  tongue  can  no 
longer  do  its  office  ;  the  motion  of  the  lips,  inducing  you  to 
bend  down,  so  that  you  catch  broken  syllables  of  expressions 
such  as  this,  "come,  Lord  Jesus,  come  quickly  ;"  these  make 
the  chamber  in  which  the  righteous  die  one  of  the  most  pri- 
vileged scenes  upon  earth  :  and  he  who  can  be  present,  and 
gather  no  assurance  that  death  is  fettered  and  manacled,  even 
whilst  grasping  the  believer,  must  be  either  inaccessible  to 
moral  evidence,  or  insensible  to  the  most  heart-touching 
appeal. 

One  after  another  is  withdrawn  from  the  church  below, 
and  heaven  is  gathering  into  its  capacious  bosom  the  com- 
pany of  the  justified.  We  feel  our  loss,  when  those  whose 
experience  cmalified  them  to  teach,  and  whose  life  was  a 
sermon  to  a  neighborhood,  are  removed  to  the  courts  of  the 
church  above.  But  we  "  sorrow  not,  even  as  others  which 
have  no  hope,"t  as  we  mark  the  breaches  which  death 
makes  on  the  right  hand  and  on  the  left.  We  may,  indeed, 
think  that  "  the  righteous  is  taken  away  from  the  evil  to 
come,"t  and  that  we  ourselves  are  left  to  struggle  through 
approaching  days  of  fear  and  perplexity.  Be  it  so.  We  are 
not  alone.  He  who  is  "  the  resurrection  and  the  life  "  leads 
us  on  to  the  battle  and  the  grave.  It  might  accord  better  with 
our  natural  feelings,  that  they  who  have  instructed  us  by 
example,  and  cheered  by  exhortation,  should  remain  to 
counsel  and  to  animate,  when  the  tide  of  war  swells  highest, 
and  the  voice  of  blasphemy  is  loudest.  We  feel  that  we  can 
but  ill  spare  the  matured  piety  of  the  veteran  Christian,  and 
the  glowing  devotion  of  younger  disciples.  Yet  we  will  say 
with  Asa,  when  there  came  against  him  Zerah  the  Ethio- 

*  Deuteronomy,  33  :  27.  t  1  Thessalonians,  4  :  13. 

t  Isaiah,  57  :  1. 


1 1(5  Hit;    DOCTRINE    01     THE    RESURRECTION. 

pian,  with  an  host  of  a  hundred  thousand  and  three  hundred 
chariots.  "  Lord,  it  is  nothing  with  thee  to  help  whether 
with  many,  or  with  them  that  have  no  power ;  help  us,  O 
Lord  our  God,  for  we  rest  on  thee,  and  in  thy  name  we  go 
against  this  multitude."* 

"  The  resurrection  and  the  life,"  these  are  thy  magnificent 
titles,  Captain  of  our  salvation  !  And.  therefore,  we  commit 
to  thee  body  and  sonl ;  for  thou  hast  redeemed  both,  and 
thou  wilt  advance  both  to  the  noblest  and  most  splendid  of 
portions.  Who  quails  and  shrinks,  scared  by  the  despotism 
of  death  ?  Who  amongst  yon  fears  the  dashings  of  those  cold 
black  waters  which  roll  between  us  and  the  promised  land  ? 
Men  and  brethren,  grasp  your  own  privileges.  Men  and 
brethren,  Christ  Jesus  has  "  abolished  death :"  will  ye,  by 
your  faithlessness,  throw  strength  into  the  skeleton,  and  give 
back  empire  to  the  dethroned  and  destroyed?  Yes,  "the 
resurrection  and  the  life  "  "  abolished  death."  Ye  must  in- 
deed die,  and.  so  far  death  remains  undestroyed.  But  if  the 
terrible  be  destroyed  when  it  can  no  longer  terrify,  and  if 
the  injurious  be  destroyed  when  it  can  no  longer  injure;  if 
the  enemy  be  abolished  when  it  does  the  work  of  a  friend, 
and  if  the  tyrant  be  abolished  when  performing  the  offices  of 
a  servant ;  if  the  repulsive  be  destroyed  when  we  can  wel- 
come it,  and  if  the  odious  be  destroyed  when  we  can  em- 
brace it;  if  the  quicksand  be  abolished  when  we  can  walk  it 
and  sink  not,  if  the  fire  be  abolished  when  we  can  pass 
through  it  and  be  scorched  not,  if  the  poison  be  abolished 
when  we  can  drink  it  and  be  hurt  not ;  then  is  death  de- 
stroyed, then  is  death  abolished,  to  all  who  believe  on  "  the 
resurrection  and  the  life  :"  and  the  noble  prophecy  is  fulfill- 
ed (bear  witness,  ye  groups  of  the  ransomed,  bending  down 
from  your  high  citadel  of  triumph),  "  O  Death,  I  will  be  thy 
plagues  ;  O  Grave,  1  will  be  thy  destruction."! 

"  I  heard  a  voice  from  heaven  "—oh,  for  the  angel's  tongue 
that  words  so  beautiful  might  have  all  their  melodiousness — 
"  saying  unto  me,  write,  blessed  are  the  dead  which  die  in 

*  2  Chronicle:-,-  14  :  11.  i  Hosea,   13  :  11. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    RESURRECTION.  117 

the  Lord  from  henceforth :  yea,  saitli  the  Spirit,  that  they 
may  rest  from  their  labors,  and  their  works  do  follow  them."* 
It  is  yet  but  a  little  while,  and  we  shall  be  delivered  from  the 
burden  and  the  conflict,  and,  with  all  those  who  have  pre- 
ceded us  in  the  righteous  struggle,  enjoy  the  deep  raptures 
of  a  Mediator's  presence.  Then,  re-united  to  the  friends  with 
whom  we  took  sweet  counsel  upon  earth,  we  shall  recount 
our  toil  only  to  heighten  our  ecstasy ;  and  call  to  mind  the 
tug  and  the  din  of  the  war,  only  that,  with  a  more  bounding 
throb,  and  a  richer  song,  we  may  feel  and  celebrate  the 
wonders  of  redemption.  And  when  the  morning  of  the  first 
resurrection  breaks  on  this  long-disordered  and  groaning 
creation,  then  shall  our  text  be  understood  in  all  its  majesty, 
and  in  all  its  marvel :  and  then  shall  the  words,  whose  syl- 
lables mingle  so  often  with  the  funeral  knell  that  we  are  dis- 
posed to  carve  them  on  the  cypress-tree  rather  than  on  the 
palm,  "  I  am  the  resurrection  and  the  life,"  form  the  chorus 
of  that  noble  anthem,  which  those  for  whom  Christ  "  died 
and  rose  and  revived  "t  shall  chant  as  they  march  from 
judgment  to  glory. 

We  add  nothing  more.  We  show  you  the  privileges  of  the 
righteous.  We  tell  you  that  if  you  would  die  their  death, 
you  must  live  their  life.  And,  conjuring  you,  by  the  memo- 
ry of  those  who  have  gone  hence  in  the  faith  of  the  Re- 
deemer, that  ye  "  run  with  patience  the  race  set  before 
you,"i  we  send  you  to  your  homes  with  the  comforting- 
words  which  succeed  our  text,  "  he  that  believeth  on  me, 
though  he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live ;  and  whosoever 
liveth  and  believeth  in  me  shall  never  die ;  believest  thou 
this  ?"  God  forbid  there  should  be  one  of  you  refusing  to 
answer  with  Martha,  "  yea,  Lord,  yea." 

*  Revelation,  14  :  13.  +  Romans,  11 :  'J. 

t  Hebrews,  12  :  1. 


SERMON    VI. 


THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS    AND    RIGHTEOUSNESS   TO    BE-PRODUCE 
THEMSELVES. 


"  For  whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap." — Gal.  6  :  7. 

You  may  be  all  aware  that  what  is  termed  the  argument 
from  analogy  has  been  carried  out  to  great  length  by  think- 
ing men,  and  that  much  of  the  strongest  witness  for  Chris- 
tianity has  been  won  on  this  field  of  investigation.  It  is  al- 
together a  most  curious  and  profitable  inquiry,  which  sets 
itself  to  the  tracing  out  resemblances  between  natural  and 
spiritual  things,  and  which  thus  proposes  to  establish,  at  the 
least,  a  probability  that  creation  and  Christianity  have  one 
and  the  same  Author.  And  we  think  that  we  shall  not  over- 
step the  limits  of  truth,  if  we  declare  that  nature  wears  the 
appearance  of  having  been  actually  designed  for  the  illus- 
tration of  the  Bible.  We  believe  that  he  who,  with  a  devout 
mind,  searches  most  diligently  into  the  beauties  and  myste- 
ries of  the  material  world,  will  find  himself  met  constantly 
by  exhibitions,  which  seem  to  him  the  pages  of  Scripture 
written  in  the  stars,  and  the  forests,  and  the  waters,  of  this 
creation.  There  is  such  a  sameness  of  dealing  characteristic 
of  the  natural  and  the  spiritual,  that  the  Bible  may  be  read 
in  the  outspread  of  the  landscape,  and  the  operations  of  agri- 
culture :  whilst,  conversely,  the  laws  obeyed  by  this  earth 
and  its  productions  may  be  traced  as  pervading  the  appoint- 
ments of  revelation.  It  were  beside  our  purpose  to  go  at 
length  into  demonstration  of  this  coincidence.  But  you  may 
all  perceive,  assuming  its  existence,  that  the  furnished  argu- 
ment is  clear  and  convincing.    If  there  run  the  same  prin- 


THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  119 

ciple  through  natural  and  spiritual  things,  through  the  book 
of  nature  and  the  Bible,  we  vindicate  the  same  authorship 
to  both,  and  prove,  with  an  almost  geometrick  precision,  that 
the  God  of  creation  is  also  the  God  of  Christianity.    I  look 
on  the  natural  firmament  with  its  glorious  inlay  of  stars ;  and 
it  is  unto  me  as  the  breastplate  of  the  great  high  priest,  "  ar- 
dent with  gems  oracular,"  from  which,  as  from  the  urim 
and  thummim  on  Aaron's  ephod,  come  messages  full  of  divi- 
nity.   And  when  I  turn  to  the  page  of  Scripture,  and  per- 
ceive the  nicest  resemblance  between  the  characters  in  which 
this  page  is  written,  and  those  which  glitter  before  me  on 
the  crowded  concave,  I  feel  that,  in  trusting  myself  to  the 
declarations  of  the  Bible,  I  cling  to  Him  who  speaks  to  me 
from  every  point,  and  by  every  splendor,  of  the  visible  uni- 
verse, whose  voice  is  in  the  marchings  of  planets,  and  the 
rushing  of  whose  melodies  is  in  the  wings  of  the  day-lighf. 
But,  though  we  go  not  into  the  general  inquiry,  we  take 
one  great  principle,  the  principle  of  a  resurrection,  and  we 
affirm,  in  illustration  of  what  has  been  advanced,  that  it  runs 
alike  through  God's  natural  and  spiritual  dealings.   Just  as 
God  hath  appointed  that  man's  body,  after  moldering  away, 
shall  come  forth  quickened  and  renewed,  so  has  he  ordained 
that  the  seed,  after  corrupting  in  the  ground,  shall  yield  a 
harvest  of  the  like  kind  with  itself.    It  is,  moreover,  God's 
ordinary  course  to  allow  an  apparent  destruction  as  prepa- 
ratory, or  introductory  to,  complete  success  or  renovation. 
He  does  not  permit  the  springing  up,  until  there  has  been, 
on  human  calculation,  a  thorough  withering  away.   So  that 
the  maxim  might  be  shown  to  hold  universally  good,  "  that 
which  thou  sowest  is  not  quickened,  except  it  die."*   We 
may  observe  yet  further,  that,  as  with  the  husbandman,  if  he 
sow  the  corn,  he  shall  reap  the  corn,  and  if  he  sow  the  weed, 
he  shall  reap  the  weed;  thus  with  myself  as  a  responsible 
agent,  if  I  sow  the  corruptible,  I  shall  reap  the  corruptible  ; 
and  if  I  sow  the  imperishable,  I  shall  reap  the  imperishable. 
The  seed  reproduces  itself.    This  is  the  fact  in  reference  to 

*  1  Corinthians,  15  :  30. 


120  THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS. 

spiritual  things,  on  which  we  would  fasten  your  attention  ; 
"  whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap." 

Now  we  are  all,  to  a  certain  extent,  familiar  with  this  prin- 
ciple ;  for  it  is  forced  on  our  notice  by  every-day  occurrences. 
We  observe  that  a  dissolute  and  reckless  youth  is  ordinarily 
followed  by  a  premature  and  miserable  old  age.  We  see 
that  honesty  and  industry  win  commonly  comfort  and  re- 
spect ;  and  that,  on  the  contrary,  levity  and  a  want  of  care- 
fulness produce  pauperism  and  disrepute.  And  yet  further, 
unless  we  go  over  to  the  ranks  of  infidelity,  we  cannot  ques- 
tion that  a  course  of  disobedience  to  God  is  earning  man's 
eternal  destruction ;  whilst,  through  submission  to  the  re- 
vealed will  of  his  Maker,  there  is  secured  admittance  into  a 
glorious  heritage.  We  are  thus  aware  that  there  runs  through 
the  Creator's  dealings  with  our  race  the  principle  of  an  iden- 
tity, or  sameness,  between  the  things  which  man  sowrs  and 
those  which  he  reaps.  But  we  think  it  possible  that  we  may 
have  contented  ourselves  with  too  superficial  a  view  of  this 
principle ;  and  that,  through  not  searching  into  what  may 
be  termed  its  philosophy,  we  allow  much  that  is  important 
to  elude  observation.  The  seed  sown  in  the  earth  goes  on, 
as  it  were,  by  a  sort  of  natural  process,  and  without  direct 
interference  from  God,  to  yield  seed  of  the  same  description 
with  itself.  And  we  wish  it  well  observed,  whether  there  be 
not  in  spiritual  things  an  analogy  the  most  perfect  to  what, 
thus  takes  place  in  natural.  We  think  that,  upon  a  careful 
examination,  you  will  find  groundwork  of  belief  that  the 
simile  holds  good  in  every  possible  respect:  so  that  what  a 
man  sows,  if  left  to  its  own  vegetating  powers,  will  yield, 
naturally,  a  harvest  of  its  own  kind  and  description. 

We  shall  study  to  establish  this  point  in  regard,  first,  to 
the  present  scene  of  probation  ;  and,  secondly,  to  the  future 
scene  of  recompense. 

We  begin  with  the  present  scene  of  probation,  and  will 
put  you  in  possession  of  the  exact  point  to  be  made  out,  by 
referring  you  to  the  instance  of  Pharaoh.  We  know  that 
whilst  God  was  acting  on  the  Egyptians  by  the  awful  appa- 
ratus of  plague  and  prodigy,  he  is  often  said  to  have  hard- 


THE    TOWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  121 

ened  Pharaoh's  heart,  so  that  the  monarch  refused  to  let 
Israel  go.  And  it  is  a  great  question  to  decide,  whether  God 
actually  interfered  to  strengthen  and  confirm  the  obstinacy 
of  Pharaoh,  or  only  left  the  king  to  the  workings  of  his  own 
heart,  as  knowing  that  one  degree  of  unbelief  would  gene- 
rate another  and  a  stauncher.  It  seems  to  us  at  variance 
with  all  that  is  revealed  of  the  Creator,  to  suppose  him  urg- 
ing on  the  wicked  in  his  wickedness,  or  bringing  any  engine 
to  bear  on  the  ungodly  which  shall  make  them  more  despe- 
rate in  rebellion.  God  willeth  not  the  death  of  any  sinner. 
And  though,  after  long  striving  with  an  individual,  after 
plying  him  with  the  various  excitements  which  are  best  cal- 
culated to  stir  a  rational,  and  agitate  an  immortal  being,  he 
may  withdraw  all  the  aids  of  the  Spirit,  and  so  give  him  over 
to  that  worst  of  all  tyrants,  himself;  yet  this,  we  contend, 
must  be  the  extreme  thing  ever  done  by  the  Almighty  to 
man,  the  leaving  him,  but  not  the  constraining  him,  to  do 
evil.  And  when,  therefore,  it  is  said  that  God  hardened 
Pharaoh's  heart,  and  when  the  expression  is  repeated,  so  as 
to  mark  a  continued  and  on-going  hardening,  we  have  no 
other  idea  of  the  meaning  than  that  God,  moved  by  the  ob- 
stinacy of  Pharaoh,  withdrew  from  him,  gradually,  all  the 
restraints  of  his  grace ;  and  that  as  these  restraints  were  more 
and  more  removed,  the  heart  of  the  king  was  more  and  more 
hardened.  We  look  upon  the  instance  as  a  precise  illustra- 
tion of  the  truth,  that  "  whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall 
he  also  reap."  Pharaoh  sowed  obstinacy,  and  Pharaoh  reap- 
ed obstinacy.  The  seed  was  put  into  the  soil ;  and  there  was 
no  need,  any  more  than  with  the  grain  of  corn,  that  God 
should  interfere  with  any  new  power.  Nothing  more  was 
required  than  that  the  seed  should  be  left  to  vegetate,  to  act 
out  its  own  nature.  And  though  God,  had  he  pleased,  might 
have  counteracted  this  nature,  yet,  when  he  resolved  to  give 
up  Pharaoh  to  his  unbelief,  he  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  let 
alone  this  nature.  The  seed  of  infidelity,  which  Pharaoh 
had  sown  when  he  rejected  the  first  miracles,  was  left  to 
itself,  and  to  its  own  vegetation.  It  sent  up,  accordingly,  a 
harvest  of  its  own  kind,  a  harvest  of  infidelity,  and  Pharaoh 
16 


122  THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS. 

was  not  to  be  persuaded  by  any  of  the  subsequent  miracles. 
So  that,  when  the  monarch  went  on  from  one  degree  of  hard- 
ness to  another,  till  at  length,  advancing  through  the  cold 
ranks  of  the  prostrated  first-born,  he  pursued,  across  a  black- 
ened and  devastated  territory,  the  people  for  whose  emanci- 
pation there  had  been  the  visible  making  bare  of  the  arm  of 
Omnipotence,  he  was  not  an  instance — perish  the  thought — 
of  a  man  compelled  by  his  Maker  to  offend  and  be  lost ;  but 
simply  a  witness  to  the  truth  of  the  principle,  that  "  whatso- 
ever a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap." 

Now  that  which  took  place  in  the  case  of  this  Egyptian  is, 
we  argue,  precisely  what  occurs  in  regard  generally  to  the 
unpenitent.  God  destroys  no  man.  Every  man  who  is  de- 
stroyed must  destroy  himself.  When  a  man  stifles  an  admo- 
nition of  conscience,  he  may  fairly  be  said  to  sow  the 
stiflings  of  conscience.  And  when  conscience  admonishes 
him  the  next  time,  it  will  be  more  feebly  and  faintly.  There 
will  be  a  less  felt  difficulty  in  overpowering  the  admonition. 
And  the  feebleness  of  remonstrance,  and  the  facility  of  resist- 
ance, will  increase  on  every  repetition  ;  not  because  God  in- 
terferes to  make  the  man  callous,  but  because  the  thing  sown 
was  stifling  of  conscience,  and  therefore  the  thing  reaped 
is  stifling  of  conscience.  The  Holy  Spirit  strives  with  eve- 
ry man.  Conscience  is  but  the  voice  of  Deity  heard  above 
the  din  of  human  passions.  But  let  conscience  be  resisted, 
and  the  Spirit  is  grieved.  Then,  as  with  Pharaoh,  there,  is 
an  abstraction  of  that  influence  by  which  evil  is  kept  under. 
And  thus  there  is  a  less  and  less  counteraction  to  the  vege- 
tating power  of  the  seed,  and,  therefore,  a  more  and  more 
abundant  upspringing  of  that  which  was  sown.  So  that, 
though  there  must  be  a  direct  and  mighty  interference  of 
Deity  for  the  salvation  of  a  man,  there  is  no  such  interfer- 
ence for  his  destruction.  God  must  sow  the  seed  of  regene- 
ration, and  enable  a  man,  according  to  the  phraseology  of 
the  verse  succeeding  our  text,  to  sow  "  to  the  Spirit,"  But 
man  sows  for  himself  the  seed  of  impenitence,  and  of  him- 
self, "  he  soweth  to  his  flesh."  And  what  he  sows,  he  reaps. 
Jf,  as  he  grows  older,  he  grow  more  confirmed  in  his  wick- 


THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  123 

edness  ;  if  warnings  come  upon  him  with  less  and  less  ener- 
gy ;  if  the  solemnities  of  the  judgment  lose  more  and  more 
their  power  of  alarming  him,  and  the  terrors  of  hell  their 
power  of  affrighting  him ;  why,  the  man  is  nothing  else  but 
an  exhibition  of  the  thickening  of  the  harvest  of  which  him- 
self sowed  the  seed ;  and  he  puts  forth,  in  this  his  confirmed 
and  settled  impenitence,  a  demonstration,  legible  by  every 
careful  observer,  that  there  needs  no  apparatus  for  the  turn- 
ing a  man  gradually  from  the  clay  to  the  adamant,  over  and 
above  the  apparatus  of  his  own  heart,  left  to  itself,  and  let 
alone  to  harden. 

We  greatly  desire  that  you  should  rightly  understand 
what  the  agency  is  through  which  the  soul  is  destroyed.  It 
is  not  that  God  hath  sent  out  a  decree  against  a  man.  It  is 
not  that  he  throws  a  darkness  before  his  eyes  which  cannot 
be  penetrated,  and  a  dullness  into  his  blood  which  cannot  be 
thawed,  and  a  torpor  into  his  limbs  which  cannot  be  over- 
come. Harvest-time  bringing  an  abundant  produce  of  what 
was  sown  in  the  seed-time — this,  we  contend,  is  the  sum-total 
of  the  mystery.  God  interferes  not,  as  it  were,  with  the  pro- 
cesses of  nature.  He  opposes  not,  or,  to  speak  more  correctly, 
he  withdraws  gradually  his  opposition  to,  the  vegetation  of 
the  seed.  And  this  is  all.  There  is  nothing  more  needed. 
You  resist  a  motion  of  the  Spirit.  Well  then,  this  facilitates 
further  resistance.  He  who  has  resisted  once  will  have  less 
difficulty  in  resisting  the  second  time,  and  less  than  that  the 
third  time,  and  less  than  that  the  fourth  time.  So  that  there 
comes  a  harvest  of  resistances,  and  all  from  the  single  grain 
of  the  first  resistance.  You  indulge  yourself  once  in  a  known 
sin.  Why,  you  will  be  more  easily  overpowered  by  the  se- 
cond temptation,  and  again  more  easily  by  the  third,  and 
again  more  easily  by  the  fourth.  And  what  is  this  but  a  har- 
vest of  sinful  indulgences,  and  all  from  the  one  grain  of  the 
first  indulgence  ?  You  omit  some  portion  of  spiritual  exercis- 
es, of  prayer,  or  of  the  study  of  the  word.  The  omission  will 
o-row  upon  you.  You  will  omit  more  to-morrow,  and  more 
the  next  day,  and  still  more  the  next.  And  thus  there  will 
be  a  harvest  of  omissions,  and  all  from  the  solitary  grain  of 


124  THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS. 

the  first  omission.  And  if,  through  the  germinating  power 
of  that  which  man  sows,  he  proceed  naturally  from  bad  to 
worse;  if  resistance  produce  resistance,  and  indulgence  in- 
dulgence, and  omission  omission  ;  shall  it  be  denied  that  the 
sinner,  throughout  the  whole  history  of  his  experience, 
throughout  his  progress  across  the  waste  of  worldliness  and 
obduracy  and  impenitence — passing  on,  as  he  does,  to  suc- 
cessive stages  of  indifference  to  God,  and  fool-hardiness,  and 
recklessness — is  nothing  else  but  the  mower  of  the  fruits  of 
his  own  husbandry,  and  thus  witnesses,  with  a  power  which 
outdoes  all  the  power  of  language,  that  "  whatsoever  a  man 
soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap?" 

It  is  in  this  manner  that  we  go  into  what  we  term  the  phi- 
losophy of  our  text,  when  applied  to  the  present  scene  of  pro- 
bation. We  take  the  seed  in  the  soil.  We  show  you,  that  by 
a  natural  process,  without  the  interference  of  God,  and 
simply  through  his  ceasing  to  counteract  the  tendencies, 
there  is  produced  a  wide  crop  of  the  same  grain  as  was  sown . 
And  thus — all  kinds  of  opposition  to  God  propagating  them- 
selves— he  who  becomes  wrought  up  into  an  infidel  hardi- 
hood, or  lulled  into  a  sepulchral  apathy,  is  nothing  but  the 
sower  living  on  to  be  the  reaper,  the  husbandman  in  the  suc- 
cessive stages  of  an  agriculture,  wherein  the  ploughing,  and 
the  planting,  and  the  gathering,  are  all  his  own  achievement, 
and  all  his  own  destruction. 

Now  we  have  confined  ourselves  to  the  supposition  that 
the  thing  sown  is  wickedness.  But  you  will  see  at  once,  that, 
with  a  mere  verbal  alteration,  whatever  has  been  advanced 
illustrates  our  text  when  the  thing  sown  is  righteousness.  If 
a  man  resist  temptation,  there  will  be  a  facility  of  resisting 
ever  augmenting  as  he  goes  on  with  self-denial.  Every  new 
achievement  of  principle  will  smooth  the  way  to  future 
achievements  of  the  like  kind  ;  and  the  fruit  of  each  moral 
victory — for  we  may  consider  the  victory  as  a  seed  that  is 
sown — is  to  place  us  on  loftier  vantage-ground  for  the  tri- 
umphs of  righteousness  in  days  yet  to  come.  We  cannot 
perform  a  virtuous  act  without  gaining  fresh  sinew  for  the 
service  of  virtue  ;  just  as  we  cannot  perform  a  vicious,  with- 


THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  125 

out  riveting  faster  to  ourselves  the  fetters  of  vice.  And,  as- 
suredly, if  there  be  thus  such  a  growing  strength  in  habit 
that  every  action  makes  way  for  its  repetition,  we  may  de- 
clare of  virtue  and  righteousness  that  they  reproduce  them- 
selves ;  and  is  not  this  the  same  thing  as  proving  that  what 
we  sow,  that  also  do  we  reap  ? 

We  would  yet  further  remark,  under  this  head  of  dis- 
course, that  the  principle  of  reaping  what  we  sow  is  specially 
to  be  traced  through  all  the  workings  of  philanthropy.  "VVe 
are  persuaded  that,  if  an  eminently  charitable  man  experienc- 
ed great  reverse  of  circumstances,  so  that  from  having  been 
the  affluent  and  the  benefactor  he  became  the  needy  and  de- 
pendent, he  would  attract  towards  himself,  in  his  distress,  all 
the  sympathies  of  a  neighborhood.  And  whilst  the  great  man, 
who  had  had  nothing  but  his  greatness  to  recommend  him, 
would  be  unpitied  or  uncared-for  in  disaster  ;  and  the  avari- 
cious man,  who  had  grasped  tightly  his  wealth,  would  meet 
only  ridicule  when  it  had  escaped  from  his  hold  ;  the  phi- 
lanthropic man,  who  had  used  his  riches  as  a  steward,  would 
form,  in  his  penury,  a  sort  of  focus  for  the  kindliness  of  a 
thousand  hearts  ;  and  multitudes  would  press  forward  to 
tender  him  the  succor  which  he  had  once  given  to  others  ; 
and  thus  there  would  be  a  mighty  reaping  into  his  own  gra- 
naries of  that  very  seed  which  he  had  been  assiduous  in 
sowing. 

We  go  on  to  observe  that  it  is  the  marvelous  property  of 
spiritual  things,  though  we  can  scarcely  affirm  it  of  natural, 
that  the  effort  to  teach  them  to  others  gives  enlargement  to 
our  own  sphere  of  information.  We  are  persuaded  that  the 
most  experienced  Christian  cannot  sit  down  with  the  neglect- 
ed and  grossly  ignorant  laborer — nay,  not  with  the  child  in 
a  Sunday  or  infant-school — and  strive  to  explain  and  enforce 
the  great  truths  of  the  Bible,  without  finding  his  own  views 
of  the  Gospel  amplified  and  cleared  through  this  engagement 
in  the  business  of  tuition.  The  mere  trying  to  make  a  point 
plain  to  another  will  oftentimes  make  it  far  plainer  than  ever 
to  ourselves.  In  illustrating  a  doctrine  of  Scripture,  in  en- 
deavoring to  brinsr  it  down  to  the  level  of  a  weak  or  undis- 


12G  THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS. 

ciplined  understanding,  you  will  find  that  doctrine  present- 
ing itself  to  your  own  minds  with  a  new  power,  and  unima- 
gined  beauty ;  and  though  you  may  have  read  the  standard 
writers  on  theology,  and  mastered  the  essays  of  the  most 
learned  divines,  yet  shall  such  fresh  and  vigorous  apprehen- 
sions of  truth  be  derived  often  from  the  effort  to  press  it  home 
on  the  intellect  and  conscience  of  the  ignorant,  that  you  shall 
pronounce  the  cottage  of  the  untaught  peasant  your  best 
school-house,  and  the  questions  even  of  a  child  your  most 
searching  catechisings  on  the  majestic  and  mysterious  things 
of  our  faith.  And  as  you  tell  over  to  the  poor  cottager  the 
story  of  the  incarnation  and  crucifixion,  and  inform  him  of 
the  nature  and  effects  of  Adam's  apostasy;  or  even  find 
yourself  required  to  adduce  more  elementary  truths,  pressing 
on  the  neglected  man  the  being  of  a  God,  and  the  immorta- 
lity of  the  soul ;  oh,  it  shall  constantly  occur  that  you  will 
feel  a  keener  sense  than  ever  of  the  preciousness  of  Christ, 
or  a  greater  awe  at  the  majesties  of  Jehovah,  or  a  loftier 
bounding  of  spirit  at  the  thought  of  your  own  deathlessness  : 
and  if  you  feel  tempted  to  count  it  strange  that  in  teaching 
another  you  teach  also  yourself,  and  that  you  carry  away 
from  your  intercourse  with  the  mechanic,  or  the  child,  such 
an  accession  to  your  own  knowledge,  or  your  own  love,  as 
shall  seem  to  make  you  the  indebted  party,  and  not  the 
obliging ;  then  you  have  only  to  remember — and  the  re- 
membrance will  sweep  away  surprise — that  it  is  a  fixed  ap- 
pointment of  the  Almighty,  that  "  whatsoever  a  man  soweth, 
that  shall  he  also  reap." 

In  respect,  moreover,  to  alms-giving,  we  may  assert  that 
there  is  evidently  such  a  present  advantage  in  communi- 
cating of  our  temporal  good  things,  that  the  giver  becomes 
the  receiver,  and  thus  the  principle  under  review  finds  a 
fresh  illustration.  The  general  comfort  and  security  of  so- 
ciety depend  so  greatly  on  the  well-being  of  the  lower 
orders,  that  the  rich  consult  most  for  themselves  when  they 
consult  most  for  the  poor.  There  must  be  restlessness  and 
anxiety  in  the  palace,  whilst  misery  oppresses  the  great  mass 
of  a  population.    And  every  effort  to  increase  the  happiness. 


I1IE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  127 

and  heighten  the  character  of  the  poor,  will  tell  powerfully 
on  the  condition  of  those  by  whom  it  is  made,  seeing  that 
the  contentment  and  good  order  of  the  peasantry  of  a  country 
give  value  to  the  revenues  of  its  nobles  and  merchants.  For 
our  own  part,  we  never  look  on  a  public  hospital  or  infirma- 
ry, we  never  behold  the  alms-houses  into  which  old  age  may 
be  received,  and  the  asylums  which  have  been  thrown  up 
on  all  sides  for  the  widow  and  the  orphan,  without  feeling 
that,  however  generously  the  rich  come  forward  to  the  relief 
of  the  poor,  they  advantage  themselves  whilst  providing  for 
the  suffering  and  destitute.  These  buildings,  which  are  the 
best  diadem  of  our  country,  not  only  bring  blessings  on  the 
land,  by  serving,  it  may  be,  as  electrical  conductors  which 
turn  from  us  many  flashes  of  the  lightning  of  wrath  ;  but, 
being  as  centres  whence  succors  are  sent  through  distressed 
portions  of  our  community,  they  are  fostering-places  of  kindly 
dispositions  towards  the  wealthier  ranks ;  and  may,  there- 
fore, be  so  considered  as  structures  in  which  a  kingdom's 
prosperity  is  nursed,  that  the  fittest  inscription  over  their 
gateways  would  be  this,  "  whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that 
shall  he  also  reap." 

Now  before  we  turn  to  the  second  topic  of  discourse,  we 
would  make  a  close  application  of  some  of  our  foregoing- 
statements.  You  perceive  the  likelihood,  or  rather  the  cer- 
tainty, to  be,  that  in  all  cases,  there  will  be  a  self-propagating 
power  in  evil,  so  that  the  wrong  done  shall  be  parent  to  a 
line  of  misdoings.  We  have  shown  you,  for  example,  that 
to  stifle  a  conviction  is  the  first  step  in  a  pathway  which 
leads  directly  to  stupefaction  of  conscience.  And  we  desire 
to  fasten  on  this  fact,  and  so  to  exhibit  it  that  all  may  dis- 
cern their  near  concernment  therewith.  We  remark  that 
men  will  flock  in  crowds  to  the  public  preaching  of  the 
word,  though  the  master  natural  passion,  whatsoever  it  be, 
retain  undisputed  the  lordship  of  their  spirits.  And  this  pas- 
sion may  be  avarice,  or  it  may  be  voluptuousness,  or  ambi- 
tion, or  envy,  or  pride.  But,  however  characterized,  the  do- 
minant lust  is  brought  into  the  sanctuary,  and  exposed,  so 
to  speak,  to  the  exorcisms  of  the  preacher.    And  who  shall 


128  THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS. 

say  what  a  disturbing  force  the  sermon  will  oftentimes  put 
forth  against  the  master-passion ;  and  how  frequently  the 
word  of  the  living  God,  delivered  in  earnestness  and  affec- 
tion, shall  have  almost  made  a  breach  in  the  strong-holds  of 
Satan  ?  Aye,  we  believe  that  often,  when  a  minister,  gather- 
ing himself  up  in  the  strength  of  his  master,  launches  the 
thunderbolt  of  truth  against  vice  and  unrighteousness,  there 
is  a  vast  stirring  of  heart  through  the  listening  assembly ; 
and  that  as  he  reasons  of  "  righteousness,  temperance,  and 
judgment  to  come,"*  though  the  natural  ear  catch  no  sounds 
of  anxiety  and  alarm,  attendant  angels,  who  watch  the  work- 
ings of  the  Gospel,  hear  the  deep  beatings  of  many  soula, 
and  almost  start  at  the  bounding  throb  of  aroused  and  agi- 
tated spirits.  If  Satan  ever  tremble  for  his  ascendency,  it  is 
when  the  preacher  has  riveted  the  attention  of  the  uncon- 
verted individual ;  and,  after  describing  and  denouncing  the 
covetous,  or  pouring  out  the  torrent  of  his  speech  on  an  ex- 
hibition of  the  voluptuary,  or  exposing  the  madness  and  mi- 
sery of  the  proud,  comes  down  on  that  individual  with  the 
startling  announcement,  "  thou  art  the  man."  And  the  indi- 
vidual goes  away  from  the  sanctuary,  convinced  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  subduing  the  master-passion ;  and  he  will  form, 
and  for  a  while  act  upon,  the  resolution  of  wrestling  against 
pride,  or  of  mortifying  lust,  or  of  renouncing  avarice.  But 
he  proceeds  in  his  own  strength,  and,  having  no  conscious- 
ness of  the  inabilities  of  his  nature,  seeks  not  to  God's  Spirit 
for  assistance.  In  a  little  time,  therefore,  all  the  impression 
wears  away.  He  saw  only  the  danger  of  sin  :  he  went  not  on 
to  see  its  vileness.  And  the  mind  soon  habituates  itself,  or  soon 
grows  indifferent,  to  the  contemplation  of  danger,  and,  above 
all,  when  perhaps  distant.  Hence  the  man  wall  return  quick- 
ly to  his  old  haunts.  And  whether  it  be  to  money-making 
that  he  again  gives  himself,  or  to  sensuality,  or  to  ambition, 
he  will  enter  on  the  pursuit  with  an  eagerness  heightened 
by  abstinence ;  and  thus  the  result  shall  be  practically  the 
same,  as  though,  having  sown  moral  stupor,  he  were  reap- 

*  Acts,  24  :  ^. 


THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  129 

ing  in  a  harvest  tremendously  luxuriant.  And,  oh,  if  the  man, 
after  this  renouncement,  and  restoration,  of  the  master-pas- 
sion, come  again  to  the  sanctuary  ;  and  if  again  the  preacher 
denounce,  with  a  righteous  vehemence,  every  working  of 
ungodliness  ;  and  the  fire  be  in  his  eye,  and  the  thunder  on 
his  tongue,  as  he  makes  a  stand  for  God,  and  for  truth, 
against  a  reckless  and  semi-infidel  generation ;  alas !  the 
man  who  has  felt  convictions,  and  sown  their  stiflings,  will 
be  more  inaccessible  than  ever,  and  more  impervious.  He 
will  have  been  hardened  through  the  vegetating  process 
which  has  gone  on  in  his  soul.  A  far  mightier  apparatus 
than  before  will  be  required  to  make  the  lightest  impres- 
sion. And  when  you  think  that  there  the  man  is  now  sitting, 
unmoved  by  the  terrors  of  the  word ;  that  he  can  listen  with 
indifference  to  the  very  truths  which  once  agitated  him ;  and 
that,  as  a  consequence  on  the  reproduction  of  the  seed,  there 
is  more  of  the  marble  in  his  composition  than  before,  and 
more  of  the  ice,  and  more  of  the  iron,  so  that  the  likelihood 
of  salvation  is  fearfully  diminished ;  ye  can  need  no  other 
warning  against  trifling  with  convictions,  and  thus  making 
light  of  the  appointment,  that  "  whatsoever  a  man  soweth, 
that  shall  he  also  reap." 

But  we  proposed  to  examine,  in  the  second  place,  the  ap- 
plication of  the  principle  of  our  text  to  the  future  scene  of 
recompense.  There  can  be  no  question  that  the  reference  of 
the  apostle  is,  specially,  to  the  retributions  of  another  stale 
of  being.  The  present  life  is  emphatically  the  seed-time,  the 
next  life  the  harvest-time.  And  the  matter  we  now  have  in 
hand  is  the  ascertaining,  whether  it  be  by  the  natural  pro- 
cess of  the  thing  sown  yielding  the  thing  reaped,  that  sinful- 
ness here  shall  give  torment  hereafter. 

You  will  observe  that,  in  showing  the  application  of  the 
principle  under  review  to  the  present  scene  of  probation,  we 
proved  that  the  utmost  which  God  does  towards  confirming 
a  man  in  impenitence  is  the  leaving  him  to  himself,  the 
withdrawing  from  him  gradually  the  remonstrances  of  his 
Spirit.  The  man  is  literally  his  own  hardener,  and,  there- 
fore, literally  his  own  destroyer.  And  we  now  inquire,  whe- 
17 


loO  THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS. 

fcher  or  no  he  will  be  his  own  punisher  'I  We  seem  required, 
i[  we  would  maintain  rigidly  the  principle  of  our  text,  to 
suppose  that  what  is  reaped  in  the  future  shall  be  identical 
with  what  is  sown  in  the  present.  It  cannot  be  questioned 
that  this  is  a  fair  representation.  The  seed  reproduces  itself. 
It  is  the  same  grain  which  the  sower  scatters,  and  the  reaper 
collects.  We  may,  therefore,  lay  it  down  as  the  statement  of 
our  text,  that  what  is  reaped  in  the  next  life  shall  be  literal- 
ly of  the  same  kind  with  what  is  sown  in  this  life.  But  if 
this  be  correct,  it  must  follow  that  a  man's  sinfulness  shall 
be  a  man's  punishment.  And  there  is  no  lack  of  scriptural 
evidence  on  the  side  of  the  opinion,  that  the  leaving  the 
wicked,  throughout  eternity,  to  their  mutual  recriminations, 
to  the  workings  and  boilings  of  over-wrought  passions,  to 
the  scorpion-sting  of  an  undying  remorse,  and  all  the  native 
and  inborn  agonies  of  vice — that  this,  without  the  interfer- 
ence of  a  divinely- sent  ministry  of  vengeance,  may  make 
that  pandemonium  which  is  sketched  to  us  by  all  that  is  ter- 
rible and  ghastly  in  imagery;  and  that  tormenting,  only 
through  giving  up  the  sinner  to  be  his  own  tormentor,  God 
may  fulfil  all  the  ends  of  a  retributive  economy,  awarding  to 
wickedness  its  merited  condemnation,  and  displaying  to  the 
universe  the  dreadfulness  of  rebellion. 

It  may  be,  we  say,  that  there  shall  be  required  no  direct 
interferences  on  the  part  of  God.  It  may  be  that  the  Almighty 
shall  not  commission  an  avenging  train  to  goad  and  lacerate 
the  lost.  The  sinner  is  hardened  by  being  left  to  himself ; 
and  may  it  not  be  that  the  sinner  shall  be  punished  by  being 
left  to  himself?  We  think  assuredly  that  the  passage  before 
ns  leads  straightway  to  such  a  conclusion.  We  may  have 
habituated  ourselves  to  the  idea  that  God  shall  take,  as  it 
were,  into  his  own  hands  the  punishment  of  the  condemned, 
and  that,  standing  over  them  as  the  executioner  of  the  sen-- 
tence,  he  will  visit  body  and  soul  with  the  inflictions  of 
wrath.  But  it  consists  far  better  with  the  character  of  God, 
that  judgment  should  be  viewed  as  the  natural  produce  of 
sinfulness,  so  that,  without  any  divine  interference,  the  sin- 
fulness will  generate  the  judgment.  Let  sinfulness  alone,  and 


THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  IS  I 

it  will  become  punishment.  Such  is,  probably,  the  true  ac- 
count of  this  awful  matter.  The  thing  reaped  is  the  thing 
sown.  And  if  the  thing  sown  be  sinfulness,  and  if  the  thing 
reaped  be  punishment,  then  the  punishment,  after  all,  must 
be  the  sinfulness  ;  and  that  fearful  apparatus  of  torture 
which  is  spoken  of  in  Scripture,  the  apparatus  of  a  worm  that 
dieth  not,  and  of  a  fire  that  is  not  quenched  ;  this  may  be  just 
a  man's  own  guilt,  the  things  sown  in  this  mortal  life  sprung 
up  and  waving  in  an  immortal  harvest.  We  think  this  a 
point  of  great  moment.  It  were  comparatively  little  to  say  of 
an  individual  who  sells  himself  to  work  evil,  and  carries  it 
with  a  high  hand  and  a  brazen  front  against  the  Lord  of  the 
whole  earth,  that  he  shuts  himself  up  to  a  certain  and  defi- 
nite destruction.  The  thrilling  truth  is,  that,  in  working  ini- 
quity, he  sows  for  himself  anguish.  He  gives  not  way  to  a 
new  desire,  he  allows  not  a  fresh  victory  to  lust,  without 
multiplying  the  amount  of  final  torment.  By  every  excur- 
sion of  passion,  and  by  every  indulgence  of  an  unhallowed 
craving,  and  by  all  the  misdoings  of  a  hardened  or  dissolute 
life,  he  may  be  literally  said  to  pour  into  the  granary  of  his 
future  destinies  the  goads  and  stings  which  shall  madden  his 
spirit.  He  lays  up  more  food  for  self-reproach.  He  widens 
the  field  over  which  thought  will  pass  in  bitterness,  and 
mow  down  remorse.  He  teaches  the  worm  to  be  ingenious 
in  excruciating,  by  tasking  his  wit  that  he  may  be  ingenious 
in  sinning — for  some  men,  as  the  prophet  saith — and  it  is  a 
wonderful  expression — "are  wise  to  do  evil."*  And  thus,  his 
iniquities  opening,  as  it  were,  fresh  inlets  for  the  approaches 
of  vengeance,  with  the  growth  of  wickedness  will  be  the 
growth  of  punishment :  and  at  last  it  will  appear  that  his 
resistance  to  convictions,  his  neglect  of  opportunities,  and  his 
determined  enslavement  to  evil,  have  literally  worked  for 
him  "  a  far  more  exceeding  and  eternal  weight"  of  despair. 
But  even  this  expresses  not  clearly  and  fully  what  seems 
taught  by  our  text.  We  are  searching  for  an  identity,  or 
sameness,  between  what  is  sown  and  what  is  reaped.     We, 

*  Jeremiah,  4  :  22.     i 


132  THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS. 

therefore,  yet  further  observe  that  it  may  not  be  needful  that 
a  material  rack  should  be  prepared  for  the  body,  and  fiery 
spirits  gnaw  upon  the  soul.  It  may  not  be  needful  that  the 
Creator  should  appoint  distinct  and  extraneous  arrangements 
for  torture.  Let  what  we  call  the  husbandry  of  wickedness 
go  forward  ;  let  the  sinner  reap  what  the  sinner  has  sown  ; 
and  there  is  a  harvest  of  anguish  for  ever  to  be  gathered. 
Who  discerns  not  that  punishment  may  thus  be  sinfulness, 
and  that,  therefore,  the  principle  of  our  text  may  hold  good, 
to  the  very  letter,  in  a  scene  of  retribution  ?  A  man  "  sows 
to  the  flesh :"  this  is  the  apostle's  description  of  sinfulness. 
He  is  "  of  the  flesh  to  reap  corruption  :"  this  is  his  descrip- 
tion of  punishment.  He  "  sows  to  the  flesh  "  by  pampering 
the  lusts  of  the  flesh ;  and  he  "  reaps  of  the  flesh,"  when 
these  pampered  lusts  fall  on  him  with  fresh  cravings,  and 
demand  of  him  fresh  gratifications.  But  suppose  this  reaping 
continued  in  the  next  life,  and  is  not  the  man  mowing  down 
a  harvest  of  agony?  Let  all  those  passions  and  desires,  which 
it  has  been  the  man's  business  upon  earth  to  indulge,  hun- 
ger and  thirst  for  gratification  hereafter,  and  will  ye  seek 
elsewhere  for  the  parched  tongue  beseeching  fruitlessly  one 
drop  of  water?  Let  the  envious  man  keep  his  envy,  and  the 
jealous  man  his  jealousy,  and  the  revengeful  man  his  re- 
vengefulness  ;  and  each  has  a  worm  which  shall  eat  out 
everlastingly  the  very  core  of  his  soul.  Let  the  miser  have 
still  his  thoughts  upon  gold,  and  the  drunkard  his  upon  the 
wine-cup,  and  the  sensualist  his  upon  voluptuousness;  and 
a  fire-sheet  is  round  each  which  shall  never  be  extinguish- 
ed. We  know  not  whether  it  be  possible  to  conjure  up  a 
more  terrific  image  of  a  lost  man,  than  by  supposing  him 
everlastingly  preyed  upon  by  the  master-lust  which  has  here 
held  him  in  bondage.  We  think  that  you  have  before  you 
the  spectacle  of  a  being,  hunted,  as  it  were,  by  a  never-wea- 
ried fiend,  when  you  imagine  that  there  rages  in  the  licen- 
tious and  profligate — only  wrought  into  a  fury  which  has 
no  parallel  upon  earth — that  very  passion  which  it  was  the 
concern  of  a  life-time  to  indulge,  but  which  it  must  now  be 
the  employment  of  an  eternity  to  deny.    We  are  persuaded 


THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  133 

that  you  reach  the  summit  of  all  that  is  tremendous  in  con- 
ception, when  you  suppose  a  man  consigned  to  the  tyranny 
of  a  lust  which  cannot  be  conquered,  and  which  cannot  be 
gratified.  It  is,  literally,  surrendering  him  to  a  worm  which 
dies  not,  to  a  fire  which  is  not  quenched.  And  whilst  the 
lust  does  the  part  of  a  ceaseless  tormentor,  the  man,  unable 
longer  to  indulge  it,  will  writhe  in  remorse  at  having  en- 
dowed it  with  sovereignty:  and  thus  there  will  go  on 
(though  not  in  our  power  to  conceive,  and,  O  God,  grant  it 
may  never  be  our  lot  to  experience)  the  cravings  of  passion 
with  the  self-reproachings  of  the  soul;  and  the  torn  and 
tossed  creature  shall  for  ever  long  to  gratify  lust,  and  forever 
bewail  his  madness  in  gratifying  it. 

Now  you  must  perceive  that  in  thus  sketching  the  pos- 
sible nature  of  future  retribution,  we  only  show  that  "  what- 
soever a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap."  We  prove 
that  sinfulness  may  be  punishment,  so  that  the  things  reaped 
shall  be  identical  with  the  things  sown,  according  to  the 
words  of  the  prophet  Hosea,  "  they  have  sown  the  wind,  and 
they  shall  reap  the  whirlwind."*  We  reckon  that  the  prin- 
ciple of  our  text,  when  rigidly  applied,  requires  us  to  sup- 
pose the  retribution  of  the  ungodly  the  natural  produce  of 
their  actions.  It  shall  not,  perhaps,  be  that  God  will  inter- 
pose with  an  apparatus  of  judgments,  any  more  than  he  now 
interposes  with  an  apparatus  for  hardening,  or  confirming  in 
impenitence.  Indifference,  if  let  alone,  will  produce  obdura- 
cy ;  and  obduracy,  if  let  alone,  will  produce  torment.  Obdu- 
racy is  indifference  multiplied  :  and  thus  it  is  the  harvest 
from  the  grain.  Torment  is  obduracy  perpetuated  and  be- 
moaned: and  this  again  is  harvest— the  grain  reproduced, 
but  with  thorns  round  the  ear.  Thus,  from  first  to  last,  "  what- 
soever a  man  soweth,  that  also  does  he  reap."  We  should  be 
disposed  to  plead  for  the  sound  divinity,  as  well  as  the  fine 
poetry,  of  words  which  Milton  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Satan, 
when  approaching  to  the  survey  of  paradise.  "  Which  way 
I  fly  is  hell ;  myself  am  hell."    "  Myself  am  hell  !"    It  is  the 

*  Ho-jea,  8  :  7, 


134  THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS. 

very  idea  which  we  have  extracted  from  our  text ;  the  idea 
of  a  lost  creature  being  his  own  tormentor,  his  own  place  of 
torment.  There  shall  be  needed  no  retinue  of  wrath  to  heap 
on  the  fuel,  or  tighten  the  rack,  or  sharpen  the  goad.  He 
cannot  escape  from  himself,  and  himself  is  hell. 

We  would  add  that  our  text  is  not  the  only  scriptural  pas- 
sage which  intimates  that  sinfulness  shall  spring  up  into 
punishment,  exactly  as  the  seed  sown  produces  the  harvest. 
In  the  first  chapter  of  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  the  eternal  wis- 
dom marks  out  in  terrible  language  the  doom  of  the  scorners. 
"  I  also  will  laugh  at  your  calamity,  and  mock  when  your 
fear  cometh."*  And  then,  when  he  would  describe  their  exact 
punishment,  he  says,  "  they  shall  eat  of  the  fruit  of  their  own 
way,  and  be  filled  with  their  own  devices."t  They  reap, 
you  see,  what  they  sow :  their  torments  are  "  their  own  de- 
vices." We  have  a  similar  expression  in  the  Book  of  Job  : 
"  even  as  I  have  seen,  they  that  plough  iniquity  and  sow 
wickedness  reap  the  same."]:  Thus  again  in  the  Book  of 
Proverbs  :  "  the  backslider  in  heart  shall  be  filled  with  his 
own  ways."§  We  may  add  that  solemn  verse  in  the  last 
chapter  of  the  Book  of  Revelation,  which  seems  to  us  exact- 
ly to  the  point.  It  is  spoken  in  the  prospect  of  Christ's  im- 
mediate appearing.  "  He  that  is  unjust,  let  him  be  unjust 
still ;  and  he  which  is  filthy,  let  him  be  filthy  still ;  and  he 
that  is  righteous,  let  him  be  righteous  still ;  and  he  that  is 
holy,  let  him  be  holy  still."||  The  master-property  is  here  re- 
presented as  remaining  the  master-property.  The  unjust 
continues  for  ever  the  unjust ;  the  filthy  for  ever  the  filthy. 
So  that  the  indulged  principle  keeps  fast  its  ascendancy,  as 
though,  according  to  our  foregoing  supposition,  it  is  to  be- 
come the  tormenting  principle.  The  distinguishing  charac- 
teristic never  departs.  When  it  can  no  longer  be  served  and 
gratified  by  its  slave,  it  wreaks  its  disappointment  tremen- 
dously on  its  victim. 

There  is  thus  a  precise  agreement  between  our  text,  as 
now  expounded,  and  other  portions  of  the  Bible  which  refer 

"  *  Proverbs,  1  :  <2C>.— t  Proverbs,  1  •  31.— t  Job,  4  :  8,— §  Proverbs. 
14  :  14,— II  Revelation.  22  :  11 


THE    TOWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  135 

to  the  same  topic.  We  have  indeed,  as  you  will  observe, 
dealt  chiefly  with  the  sowing  and  the  reaping  of  the  wicked, 
and  but  just  alluded  to  those  of  the  righteous.  It  would  not, 
however,  be  difficult  to  prove  to  you,  that,  inasmuch  as  holi- 
ness is  happiness,  godliness  shall  be  reward,  even  as  sinful- 
ness shall  be  punishment,  And  it  is  clear  that  the  apostle 
designed  to  include  both  cases  under  his  statement ;  for  he 
subjoins  as  its  illustration,  "  he  that  soweth  to  his  flesh,  shall 
of  the  flesh  reap  corruption  ;  but  he  that  soweth  to  the  Spirit 
shall  of  the  Spirit  reap  life  everlasting."  We  cannot  indeed 
plead,  in  the  second  case,  for  as  rigid  an  application  of  the 
principle  as  in  the  first.  We  cannot  argue,  that  is,  for  what 
we  call  the  natural  process  of  vegetation.  There  must  be 
constant  interferences  on  the  part  of  Deity.  God  himself, 
rather  than  man,  is  the  sower.  And  unless  God  were  con- 
tinually busy  with  the  seed,  it  could  never  germinate,  and 
send  up  a  harvest  of  glory.  Wre  think  that  this  distinction 
between  the  cases  is  intimated  by  St.  Paul.  The  one  man 
sows  "  to  the  flesh  ;"  himself  the  husbandman,  himself  the 
territory.  The  other  sows  "  to  the  Spirit,"  to  the  Holy  Ghost ; 
and  here  there  is  a  superinduced  soil  which  differs  altoge- 
ther from  the  natural.  But  if  there  be  not,  in  each  case,  pre- 
cisely the  same,  there  is  sufficient,  rigor  of  application  to 
bear  out  the  assertion  of  our  text.  We  remember  that  it  was 
"  a  crown  of  righteousness"*  which  sparkled  before  St.  Paul ; 
and  we  may,  therefore,  believe,  that  the  righteousness  which 
God's  grace  has  nourished  in  the  heart,  will  grow  into  re- 
compense, just  as  the  wickedness,  in  which  the  transgressor 
has  indulged,  will  shoot  into  torment.  So  that,  although  it 
were  easy  to  speak  at  greater  length  on  the  case  of  true  be- 
lievers, we  may  lay  it  down  as  a  demonstrated  truth,  whe- 
ther respect  be  had  to  the  godly  or  the  disobedient  of  the 
earth,  that  "  whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also 
reap." 

And  now,  what  mean  ye  to  reap  in  that  grand  harvest- 
day,  the  day  of  judgment?  Every  one  of  you  is  sowing 
either  to  the  flesh,  or  to  the  Spirit ;  and  every  one  of  you 

*  2  Timothy,  4:8., 


13t)  rilK    POWER    01     WICKEDNESS. 

must,  hereafter,  lake  the  sickle  in  his  hand,  and  mow  down 
the  produce  of  his  husbandry.  We  will  speak  no  longer  on 
things  of  terror.  We  have  said  enough  to  alarm  the  indiffer- 
ent. And  we  pray  God  that  the  careless  amongst  you  may 
find  these  words  of  the  prophet  ringing  in  their  ears,  when 
they  lie  down  to  rest  this  night,  "  the  harvest  is  passed,  the 
summer  is  ended,  and  we  are  not  saved."*  But,  ere  we  con- 
clude, we  would  address  a  word  to  the  men  of  God,  and  ani- 
mate them  to  the  toils  of  tillage  by  the  hopes  of  reaping.  We 
know  that  it  is  with  much  opposition  from  in-dwelling  cor- 
ruption, with  many  thwartings  from  Satan  and  your  own 
evil  hearts,  that  ye  prosecute  the  work  of  breaking  up  your 
fallow  ground,  and  sowing  to  yourselves  in  righteousness. 
Ye  have  to  deal  with  a  stubborn  soil.  The  prophet  Amos 
asks,  ':  shall  horses  run  upon  the  rock,  will  one  plough 
there  with  oxen  ?"t  Yet  this  is  precisely  what  you  have  to 
do.  It  is  the  rock,  "  the  heart  of  stone,"  which  you  must 
bring  into  cultivation.  Yet  be  ye  not  dismayed.  Above  all 
things,  pause  not,  as  though  doubtful  whether  to  prosecute 
a  labor  which  seems  to  grow  as  it  is  performed.  "  No  man, 
having  put  his  hand  to  the  plough,  and  looking  back,  is  fit 
for  the  kingdom  of  heaven."*  Rather  comfort  yourselves 
with  that  beautiful  declaration  of  the  Psalmist,  "  they  that 
sow  in  tears  shall  reap  in  joy."§  Rather  call  to  mind  the 
savins:  of  the  apostle,  "  ye  are  God's  husbandry."]!  It  is  God, 
who,  by  his  Spirit,  ploughs  the  ground,  and  sows  the  seed, 
and  imparts  the  influences  of  sun  and  shower.  ';  My  Father." 
said  Jesus,  <;  is  the  husbandman  fl  and  can  ye  not  feel  as- 
sured that  He  will  give  the  increase?  Look  ye  on  to  the 
harvest-time.  What,  though  the  winter  be  dreary  and  long, 
and  there  seem  no  shooting  of  the  fig-tree  to  tell  you  that 
summer  is  nigh?  Christ  shall  yet  speak  to  his  church  in  that 
loveliest  of  poetry,  "Lo,  the  winter  is  past,  the  rain  is  over 
and  gone,  the  flowers  appear  on  the  earth,  the  time  of  the 
singing  of  birds  is  come,  and  the  voice  of  the  turtle  is  heard 
in  the  land."**  Then  shall  be  the  harvest.  We  cannot  tell  you 

*  Jeremiah,  S  :  20.— t  Amos,  6  :  12  —t  Luke,  i>  :  62.— §  Psalm  126  :  5. 
II  2  Corinthians,  3  :  9.— IT  John,  15  :  1.—"*  Canticles,  2  :  11,  12. 


THE    POWER    OF    WICKEDNESS.  137 

the  glory  of  the  things  which  ye  shall  reap.  We  cannot  show 
you  the  wavings  of  the  golden  corn.  But  this  we  know,  that 
the  sufferings  of  this  present  time  are  not  worthy  to  be  com- 
pared with  the  glory  that  shall  be  revealed  in  us;"*  and, 
therefore  brethren,  beloved  in  the  Lord,  <:  be  ye  not  weary 
in  well-doing,  for  in  due  season  we  shall  reap,  if  we  faint 
not.-'t 

*  Romans,  8  :  18.—+  Galatians,  G  :  9. 


18 


SERMON    VII 


THE    POWER    OF   RELIGION    TO   STRENGTHEN    THE  HUMAN   INTELLECT. 


"  The  entrance  of  thy  words  giveth  light ;  it  giveth  understanding  to  the 
simple."— Psalm  119  :  130. 

There  is  no  point  of  view  under  which  the  Bible  can  be 
surveyed,  and  not  commend  itself  to  thinking  minds  as  a 
precious  and  wonderful  book.  Traveling  down  to  us  across 
the  waste  of  far-off  centuries,  it  brings  the  history  of  times 
which  must  otherwise  have  been  given  up  to  conjecture  and 
fable.  Instructing  us  as  to  the  creation  of  the  magnificent 
universe,  and  defining  the  authorship  of  that  rich  furniture, 
as  well  material  as  intellectual,  with  which  this  universe  is 
stored,  it  delivers  our  minds  from  those  vague  and  unsatis- 
fying theories  which  reason,  unaided  in  her  searchings,  pro- 
posed with  respect  to  the  origin  of  all  things.  Opening  up, 
moreover,  a  sublime  and  simple  system  of  theology,  it  eman- 
cipates the  world  from  degrading  superstitions,  which,  dis- 
honoring Deity  by  the  representations  propounded  of  his  cha- 
racter, turn  vice  into  virtue,  and  so  banish  what  is  praise- 
worthy from  human  society. 

And  thus,  if  you  kept  out  of  sight  the  more  important  ends 
subserved  by  the  disclosures  of  the  Bible,  there  would  be  no 
single  gift  for  which  men  stood  so  indebted  to  the  Almighty 
as  for  the  revelation  of  himself  in  the  pages  of  Scripture. 
The  great  engine  of  civilization  is  still  the  written  word  of 
the  Most  High.  And  if  you  visit  a  tribe  of  our  race  in  the 
lowest  depths  of  barbarism,  and  desire  to  bring  up  the  de- 
based creatures,  and  place  them  on  their  just  level  in  the 
scale  of  existence,  it  is  not  by  the  enactments  of  earthly 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  139 

legislation,  any  more  than  by  the  tyrannizings  of  earthly 
might,  that  you  may  look  to  bring  speedily  round  the  wished- 
for  result.  The  effective  machinery  is  Christianity,  and  Chris- 
tianity alone.  Propagate  the  tenets  of  this  religion,  as  regis- 
tered in  the  Bible,  and  a  mighty  regeneration  will  go  out 
over  the  face  of  the  long-degraded  community. 

We  need  hardly  appeal,  in  proof  of  this  assertion,  to  the 
records  of  the  effects  of  missionary  enterprise.  You  are  all 
aware,  that,  in  many  instances,  a  great  change  has  been 
wrought,  by  the  labors  of  faithful  and  self-denying  men,  on 
the  savage  clans  amongst  which  they  have  settled.  We  omit, 
for  the  present,  the  incalculable  advantages  consequent  on 
the  introduction  of  Christianity,  when  another  state  of  being 
is  brought  into  the  account.  We  consider  men  simply  with 
respect  to  their  sojourning  upon  earth ;  and  we  contend  that 
the  revolution,  effected  in  temporal  affairs,  should  win,  even 
from  those  who  prize  not  its  disclosures  in  regard  to  eternal, 
the  warmest  admiration  for  the  Bible.  There  has  succeeded 
to  lawlessness  and  violence  the  beautiful  scenery  of  good 
order  and  peace.  The  rude  beings,  wont  to  wander  to  and 
fro,  alternately  the  prey  and  the  scourge  of  neighboring 
tribes,  have  settled  down  to  the  quiet  occupations  of  indus- 
try ;  and,  gathering  themselves  into  villages,  and  plying  the 
business  of  handicraft  or  agriculture,  have  presented  the  as- 
pect of  a  well-disciplined  society  in  exchange  for  that  of  a 
roving  and  piratical  horde.  And  when  a  district  which  has 
heretofore,  both  morally  and  physically,  been  little  better 
than  a  desert,  puts  forth  in  all  its  outspread  the  tokens  of  a 
vigorous  culture  ;  and  the  Sabbath-bell  summons  from  scat- 
tered cottages  a  smiling  population,  linked  together  by  friend- 
ship, and  happy  in  all  the  sweetness  of  domestic  charities  ; 
why,  the  infidel  must  be  something  less  than  a  man,  if,  with 
all  his  contempt  for  the  Bible  as  a  revelation  from  God,  he 
refuse  to  admire  and  esteem  it  as  a  noble  engine  for  uplift- 
ing humanity  from  its  deep  degradations. 

But  we  wish  rather  to  draw  off  your  thoughts  from  what 
the  Bible  has  done  for  society  at  large,  and  to  fix  them  on 
what  it  effects  for  individuals.  It  follows,  of  course,  that,  since 


340  THE    TOWhR    OF    RELIGION. 

society  is  the  aggregate  of  individuals,  what  the  Bible  does 
for  the  mass  is  mainly  the  sum  of  what  it  does  separately  for 
the  units.  An  effect  upon  society  pre-supposes  an  effect  on  its 
component  members  in  their  individual  capacities  ;  it  being 
impossible  that  the  whole  should  be  changed  except  by  the 
change  of  its  parts. 

Now  we  are  persuaded  that  there  is  no  book,  by  the  peru- 
sal of  which  the  mind  is  so  much  strengthened,  and  so  much 
enlarged,  as  it  is  by  the  perusal  of  the  Bible,  We  deal  not 
yet  with  the  case  of  the  man  who,  being  under  the  teachings 
of  God's  Spirit,  has  the  truths  of  revelation  opened  up  to  him 
in  their  gigantic  and  overwhelming  force.  We  shall  come 
afterwards  to  the  consideration  of  the  circumstances  of  the 
converted :  we  confine  ourselves,  for  the  present,  to  those  of 
the  unconverted.  We  require  nothing  but  an  admission  of 
the  truth  of  Scripture  ;  so  that  he  who  reads  its  declarations 
and  statements,  receives  them  as  he  would  those  of  a  writer 
of  acknowledged  veracity.  And  what  we  contend  is,  that  the 
study  of  the  Bible,  even  when  supposed  without  influence 
on  the  soul,  is  calculated,  far  more  than  any  other  study,  to 
enlarge  the  mind,  and  strengthen  the  intellect.  There  is  no- 
thing so  likely  to  elevate,  and  endow  with  new  vigor,  our 
faculties,  as  the  bringing  them  into  contact  with  stupendous 
truths,  and  the  setting  them  to  grasp  and  measure  those 
truths.  If  the  human  mind  grow  dwarfish  and  enfeebled,  it 
is,  ordinarily,  because  left  to  deal  with  common-place  facts, 
and  never  summoned  to  the  effort  of  taking  the  span  and  al- 
titude of  broad  and  lofty  disclosures.  The  understanding  will 
gradually  bring  itself  down  to  the  dimensions  of  the  matters 
with  which  alone  it  is  familiarized,  till,  having  long  been 
habituated  to  contracting  its  powers,  it  shall  well-nigh  lose 
the  ability  of  expanding  them. 

But  if  it  be  for  the  enlargement  of  the  mind,  and  the 
strengthening  of  its  faculties,  that  accmaintance  should  be 
made  with  ponderous  and  far-spreading  truths,  it  must  be 
clear  that  knowledge  of  the  Bible  outdoes  all  other  know- 
ledge in  bringing  round  such  result.  We  deny  not  that  great 
effects  may  be  wrought  on  the  peasantry  of  a  land  by  that 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  1 4  i 

wondrous  diffusion  of  general  information  which  is  now  go- 
ing forward  through  the  instrumentality  of  the  press.  It  is 
not  possible  that  our  penny  magazines  should  be  carrying  to 
the  workshop  of  the  artisan,  and  the  cottage  of  the  laborer, 
an  actual  library  of  varied  intelligence,  without  producing 
an  universal  outstretch  of  mind,  whether  for  good,  or  whe- 
ther for  evil.  But  if  a  population  could  be  made  a  Bible- 
reading  population,  we  argue  that  it  would  be  made  a  far 
more  thinking,  and  a  far  more  intelligent  population,  than  it 
will  ever  become  through  the  turning  its  attention  on  sim- 
plified sciences  and  abbreviated  histories.  If  I  desired  to  en- 
large a  man's  mind,  I  should  like  to  fasten  it  on  the  truth 
that  God  never  had  beginning,  and  never  shall  have  end.  I 
would  set  it  to  the  receiving  this  truth,  and  to  the  grappling 
with  it.  I  know  that,  in  endeavoring  to  comprehend  this 
truth,  the  mind  will  be  quickly  mastered ;  and  that,  in  at- 
tempting to  push  on  to  its  boundary-lines,  it  will  fall  down, 
wearied  with  travel,  and  see  infinity  still  stretching  beyond 
it.  But  the  effort  will  have  been  a  grand  mental  discipline. 
And  he  who  has  looked  at  this  discovery  of  God,  as  made  to 
us  by  the  word  of  inspiration,  is  likely  to  have  come  away 
from  the  contemplation  with  his  faculties  elevated,  and  at 
the  same  time,  humbled ;  so  that  a  vigor,  allied  in  no  degree 
with  arrogance,  will  have  been  generated  by  the  study  of  a 
Bible-truth  ;  and  the  man,  whilst  strengthening  his  mind  by 
a  mighty  exercise,  will  have  learned  the  hardest,  and  the 
most  useful,  of  all  lessons — that  intellect  is  not  omnipotent, 
and  that  the  greatest  wisdom  may  be,  oftentimes,  the  know- 
ing ourselves  ignorant. 

We  are  not,  you  will  observe,  referring  to  the  Bible  as  con- 
taining the  food  of  the  soul,  and  as  teaching  man  what  he 
must  learn,  if  he  would  not  perish  everlastingly.  We  are 
simply  arguing,  that  the  bringing  men  to  study  the  Bible 
would  be  the  going  a  vast  deal  further  towards  making  them 
strong-minded,  and  intellectual,  than  the  dispersing  amongst 
them  treatises  on  all  the  subjects  which  philosophy  embra- 
ces. The  Bible,  whilst  the  only  book  for  the  soul,  is  the  best 
book  for  the  intellect.    The  sublimity  of  the  topics  of  which 


142  rit£    POWER    OF    RELIGION. 

it  treats;  the  dignified  simplicity  of  its  manner  of  handling 
them ;  the  nobleness  of  the  mysteries  which  it  developes  ; 
the  illumination  which  it  throws  on  points  the  most  interest- 
ing to  creatures  conscious  of  immortality ;  all  these  conspire 
to  bring  round  a  result  which  we  insist  upon  as  actual  and 
necessary,  namely,  that  the  man  who  should  study  the  Bible, 
and  not  be  benefited  by  it  spiritually,  would  be  benefited  by 
it  intellectually.  We  think  that  it  may  be  reckoned  amongst 
incredible  things,  that  converse  should  be  held  with  the  first 
parents  of  our  race ;  that  man  should  stand  on  this  creation 
whilst  its  beauty  was  unsullied,  and  then  mark  the  retinue 
of  destruction  careering  with  a  dominant  step  over  its  sur- 
face ;  that  he  should  be  admitted  to  intercourse  with  patri- 
archs and  prophets,  and  move  through  scenes  peopled  with 
the  majesties  of  the  Eternal,  and  behold  the  Godhead  him- 
self coming  down  into  humanity,  and  working  out,  in  the 
mysterious  coalition,  the  discomfiture  of  the  powers  of  dark- 
ness— oh,  we  reckon  it,  we  say,  amongst  incredible  things, 
that  all  this  should  be  permitted  to  a  man — as  it  is  permitted 
to  every  student  of  Scripture — and  yet  that  he  should  not 
come  back  from  the  ennobling  associations  with  a  mind  a 
hundred-fold  more  expanded,  and  a  hundred-fold  more  ele- 
vated, than  if  he  had  given  his  time  to  the  exploits  of  Csesar, 
or  poured  forth  his  attention  on  the  results  of  machinery. 

We  speak  not  thus  in  any  disparagement  of  the  present 
unparalleled  efforts  to  make  knowledge  accessible  to  all 
classes  of  our  community.  We  are  far  enough  from  under- 
rating such  efforts  :  and  we  hold,  unreservedly,  that  a  vast 
and  a  beneficial  effect  may  be  wrought  amongst  the  poor 
through  the  well-applied  agency  of  vigorous  instruction.  In 
the  mind  of  many  a  peasant,  whose  every  moment  is  bestow- 
ed on  wringing  from  the  soil  a  scanty  subsistence,  there 
slumber  powers,  which,  had  they  been  evolved  by  early  dis- 
cipline, would  have  elevated  their  possessor  to  the  first  rank 
of  philosophers  ;  and  many  a  mechanic,  who  goes  patiently 
the  round  of  unvaried  toil,  is,  unconsciously,  the  owner  of 
faculties,  which,  nursed  and  expanded  by  education,  would 
have  enabled  him  to  electrify  senates,  and  to  win  that  pre- 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  143 

eminence  which  men  award  to  the  majesty  of  genius.  There 
arise  occasions,  when — peculiar  circumstances  aiding  the 
development — the  pent-up  talent  struggles  loose  from  the 
trammels  of  pauperism :  and  the  peasant  and  mechanic, 
through  a  sudden  outbreak  of  mind,  start  forward  to  the 
places  for  which  their  intellect  fits  them.  But  ordinarily,  the 
powers  remain  through  life  bound-up  and  torpid  :  and  he, 
therefore,  forms  but  a  contracted  estimate  of  the  amount  of 
high  mental  endowment,  who  reckons  by  the  proud  marbles 
which  cause  the  aisles  of  a  cathedral  to  breathe  the  memory 
of  departed  greatness,  and  never  thinks,  when  walking  the 
village  church-yard  with  its  rude  memorials  of  the  fathers 
of  the  valley,  that,  possibly,  there  sleeps  beneath  his  feet  one 
who,  if  early  taught,  might  have  trode  with  a  Newton's  step 
the  firmament,  or  swept  with  a  Milton's  hand  the  harp- 
strings.  We  make,  then,  every  admission  of  the  power  which 
there  is  in  cultivation  to  enlarge  and  unfold  the  human  un- 
derstanding. We  nothing  question  that  mental  capacities  are 
equally  distributed  amongst  different  classes  of  society  ;  and 
that,  if  it  were  not  for  the  adventitious  circumstances  of 
birth,  entailing  the  advantages  of  education,  there  would  be 
sent  out  from  the  lower  grades  the  same  proportion  as  from 
the  higher,  of  individuals  distinguished  by  all  the  energies 
of  talent. 

And  thus  believing  that  efforts  to  disseminate  knowledge 
may  cause  a  general  calling  forth  of  the  mental  powers  of 
our  population,  we  have  no  other  feeling  but  that  of  pleasure 
in  the  survey  of  these  efforts.  It  is  indeed  possible — and  of 
this  we  have  our  fears — that,  by  sending  a  throng  of  publi- 
cations to  the  fireside  of  the  cottager,  you  may  draw  him 
away  from  the  Bible,  which  has  heretofore  been  specially 
the  poor  man's  book,  and  thus  inflict  upon  him,  as  we  think, 
an  intellectual  injury,  full  as  well  as  a  moral.  But,  in  the  ar- 
gument now  in  hand,  we  only  uphold  the  superiority  of 
scriptural  knowledge,  as  compared  with  any  other,  when  the 
alone  object  proposed  is  that  of  developing  and  improving 
the  thinking  powers  of  mankind.  And  we  reckon  that  a  fine 
triumph  might  be  won  for  Christianity,  by  the  taking  two 


144  TIIF.    POWER    OF    REI.TGION-. 

illiterate  individuals,  and  subjecting-  them  to  two  different 
processes  of  mental  discipline.  Let  the  one  be  made  familiar 
with  what  is  styled  general  information  :  let  the  other  be 
confined  to  what  we  call  Bible  information.  And  when,  in 
each  case,  the  process  has  gone  on  a  fair  portion  of  time,  and 
you  came  to  inquire  whose  reasoning  faculties  had  been  most 
improved,  whose  mind  had  most  grown  and  expanded  itself, 
we  are  persuaded  that  the  scriptural  study  would  vastly  carry 
it  over  the  miscellaneous  ;  and  that  the  experiment  would 
satisfactorily  demonstrate,  that  no  knowledge  tells  so  much 
on  the  intellect  of  mankind  as  that  which  is  furnished  by  the 
records  of  inspiration. 

And  if  the  grounds  of  this  persuasion  be  demanded,  we 
think  them  so  self-evident  as  scarcely  to  require  the  being 
formally  advanced.  We  say  again,  that  if  you  keep  out  of 
sight  the  concern  which  man  has  in  Scriptural  truths,  re- 
garding him  as  born  for  eternity,  there  is  a  grandeur  about 
these  truths,  and  a  splendor,  and  a  beauty,  which  must 
amaze  and  fascinate  him,  if  he  look  not  beyond  the  present 
era  of  existence.  In  all  the  wide  range  of  sciences,  what  sci- 
ence is  there  comparable,  in  its  sublimity  and  difficulty,  to 
the  science  of  God  1  In  all  the  annals  of  humankind,  what 
history  is  there  so  curious,  and  so  riveting,  as  that  of  the  in- 
fancy of  man,  the  cradling,  so  to  speak,  of  the  earth's  popu- 
lation? Where  will  you  find  a  lawgiver  from  whose  edicts 
may  be  learned  a  nobler  jurisprudence  than  is  exhibited  by 
the  statute-book  of  Moses?  Whence  will  you  gather  such 
vivid  illustrations  of  the  power  of  truth  as  are  furnished  by 
the  march  of  Christianity,  when  apostles  stood  alone,  and  a 
whole  world  was  against  them?  And  if  there  be  no  book 
which  treats  of  a  loftier  science,  and  none  which  contains  a 
more  interesting  history,  and  none  which  more  thoroughly 
discloses  the  principles  of  right  and  the  prowess  of  truth ; 
why  then,  just  so  far  as  mental  improvement  can  be  proved 
dependent  on  acquaintance  with  scientific  matters,  or  histo- 
rical, or  legal,  or  ethical,  the  Bible,  beyond  all  other  books, 
must  be  counted  the  grand  engine  for  achieving  that  im- 
provement: and  we  claim  for  the  Holy  Scriptures  the  illus- 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION. 


145 


tnoiis  distinction,  that,  containing  whatsoever  is  needful  for 
saving  the  soul,  they  present  also  whatsoever  is  best  calcula- 
ted for  strengthening  the  intellect. 

Now  we  have  not  carried  on  our  argument  to  its  utmost 
limit,  though  we  have,  perhaps,  advanced  enough  for  the  il- 
lustration of  our  text.  We  might  occupy  your  attention  with 
the  language,  as  we  have  done  with  the  matter,  of  holy  writ. 
It  were  easy  to  show  you  that  there  is  no  human  composi- 
tion presenting,  in  anything  of  the  same  degree,  the  majesty 
of  oratory  and  the  loveliness  of  poetry.  So  that  if  the  debate 
were  simply  on  the  best  means  of  improving  the  taste  of  an 
individual — others  might  commend  to  his  attention  the 
classic  page,  or  bring  forward  the  standard  works  of  a  nation's 
literature  ;  but  we,  for  our  part,  would  chain  him  down  to 
the  study  of  Scripture ;  and  we  would  tell  him,  that,  if  he 
would  learn  what  is  noble  verse,  he  must  hearken  to  Isaiah 
sweeping  the  chords  to  Jerusalem's  glory ;  and  if  he  would 
know  what  is  powerful  eloquence,  he  must  stand  by  St.  Paul 
pleading  in  bonds  at  Agrippa's  tribunal. 

It  suits  not  our  purpose  to  push  further  this  inquiry.  But 
we  think  it  right  to  impress  on  you  most  earnestly  the  won- 
derful fact,  that,  if  all  the  books  in  the  wide  world  were  as- 
sembled together,  the  Bible  would  as  much  take  the  lead  in 
disciplining  the  understanding,  as  in  directing  the  soul. 
Living,  as  we  do,  in  days  when  intellectual  and  scriptural 
are  set  down,  practically,  as  opposite  terms,  and  it  seems  ad- 
mitted as  an  axiom  that  to  civilize  and  christianize,  to  make 
men  intelligent  and  to  make  men  religious,  are  things  which 
have  no  necessary,  nor  even  possible  connection,  it  is  well 
that  we  sometimes  revert  to  the  matter-of-fact :  and  whilst 
every  stripling  is  boasting  that  a  great  enlargement  of  mind 
is  coming  on  a  nation,  through  the  pouring  into  all  its 
dwellings  a  tide  of  general  information,  it  is  right  to  uphold 
the  forgotten  position,  that,  in  caring  for  man  as  an  immor- 
tal being,  God  cared  for  him  as  an  intellectual ;  and  that,  if 
the  Bible  were  but  read  by  our  artisans  and  our  peasantry, 
we  should  be  surrounded  by  a  far  more  enlightened  and  in- 
telligent population  than  will  appear  on  this  land,  when  the 
19 


146  THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION. 

school-master,  with  his  countless  magazines,  shall  have  gone 
through  it  in  its  length  and  in  its  breadth. 

But  up  to  this  point  we  have  made  no  direct  reference  to 
those  words  of  David  which  we  brought  forward  as  the  sub- 
ject of  present  discourse.  Yet  all  our  remarks  have  tended  to 
their  illustration.  The  Psalmist,  addressing  himself  to  his 
God,  declares,  "  the  entrance  of  thy  words  giveth  light,  it 
giveth  understanding  to  the  simple."  Now  you  will  at  once 
perceive,  that,  when  taken  in  its  largest  signification,  this 
verse  ascribes  to  the  Bible  precisely  that  energy  for  which  we 
have  contended.  The  assertion  is,  that  the  entrance  of  God's 
word  gives  light,  and  that  it  gives  also  understanding  to  the 
simple  ;  whilst  it  has  been  our  endeavor  to  show  that  a  mind, 
dark  through  want  of  instruction,  or  weak  through  its  pow- 
ers, being  either  naturally  poor,  or  long  unexercised,  would 
become  either  illuminated,  or  strengthened,  through  ac- 
quaintance with  the  contents  of  Scripture.  We  thus  vindicate 
the  truth  of  our  text,  when  religion,  properly  and  strictly  so 
called,  is  not  brought  into  the  account.  We  prove  that  the 
study  of  the  Bible,  when  it  does  not  terminate  in  the  conver- 
sion of  the  soul,  will  terminate  in  the  clearing  and  improve- 
ment of  the  intellect.  So  that  you  cannot  find  the  sense 
wherein  it  does  not  hold  good,  that  "  the  entrance  of  God's 
words  giveth  light,  it  giveth  understanding  to  the  simple." 

But  we  now  go  on  to  observe  that  the  passage  applies 
with  a  vastly  greater  force  to  the  converted  than  to  the  un- 
converted. We  will  employ  the  remainder  of  our  time  in 
examining  its  truth,  when  the  student  of  Scripture  is  suppos- 
ed also  the  subject  of  grace.  It  would  seem  as  though  this 
case  were  specially  contemplated  by  the  Psalmist,  there  being 
something  in  the  phraseology  which  loses  otherwise  much 
of  its  point.  The  expression  "  the  entrance  of  thy  words," 
appears  to  denote  more  than  the  simple  perusal.  The  light 
breaks  out,  and  the  understanding  is  communicated,  not 
through  the  mere  reading  of  thy  words,  but  through  "  the 
entrance  of  thy  words :"  the  Bible  being  effective,  only  as  its 
truths  pierce,  and  go  deeper  than  the  surface.  And  although 
it  must  be  readily  conceded  that  the  mere  reading,  apart 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  147 

from  the  entrance  of  the  word,  can  effect  none  of  those  re- 
sults which  we  have  already  ascribed  to  the  Bible,  we  still 
think  the  chief  reference  must  be  to  an  entrance  into  the 
soul,  which  is  peculiar,  rather  than  to  that  into  the  under- 
standing, which  is  common.  We  may  also  remark  that  the 
marginal  reading  of  the  passage  is,  "  the  opening  of  thy 
words  giveth  light."  If  we  adopt  this  translation,  which  is, 
probably,  the  more  accurate  of  the  two,  we  must  conclude 
that  the  Psalmist  speaks  of  the  word  as  interpreted  by  God's 
Spirit,  and  not  merely  as  perused  by  the  student.  It  is  not 
the  word,  the  bare  letter,  which  gives  the  light,  and  the  un- 
derstanding, specially  intended  ;  but  the  word,  as  opened,  or 
applied  by  the  Spirit.  Now,  in  treating  the  text  in  this  its 
more  limited  signification,  we  have  to  do,  first,  with  a  fact, 
and  secondly,  with  the  reasons  of  that  fact.  The  fact  is,  that, 
on  conversion,  there  is  given  to  man  an  increased  measure  of 
understanding.  The  reasons  of  this  fact  are  to  be  looked  for 
in  another  fact,  namely,  that  conversion  results  from  the  en- 
trance, or  opening,  of  God's  words.  It  will  be  for  our  profit 
that  we  consider  attentively  both  the  fact  and  the  reasons. 
And,  first,  as  to  the  fact,  that,  on  becoming  a  man  of  godli- 
ness, the  simple  becomes  increasingly  a  man  of  under- 
standing. 

Now  it  is,  we  believe,  commonly  observed,  by  those  who 
set  themselves  to  examine  the  effects  of  religion  upon  differ- 
ent characters,  that  a  general  strengthening  of  the  mind  is 
amongst  the  usual  accompaniments  of  piety.  The  instances, 
indeed,  are  of  no  rare  occurrence  in  which  a  mental  weakness, 
bordering  almost  on  imbecility,  has  been  succeeded  by  no 
inconsiderable  soundness  and  strength  of  understanding. 
The  case  has  come  within  our  own  knowledge  of  an  indivi- 
dual, who,  before  conversion,  was  accounted,  to  say  the  least, 
of  very  limited  capacities  ;  but  who,  after  conversion,  display- 
ed such  power  of  comprehending  difficult  truths,  and  such 
facility  in  stating  them  to  others,  that  men  of  staunch  and 
well-informed  minds  sought  intercourse  as  a  privilege.  Some- 
thing of  the  same  kind  has  frequently  been  observed  in  re- 
gard to  children.   The  grace  of  God  has  fallen,  like  the  warm 


148  THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION. 

sun  of  the  east,  on  their  mental  faculties ;  and,  ripening  them 
into  the  richness  of  the  summer,  whilst  the  body  had  as  yet 
not  passed  through  its  spring-time,  has  caused  that  grey- 
hairs  might  be  instructed  by  the  tender  discipline,  and 
brought  a  neighborhood  round  a  death-bed  to  learn  wisdom 
from  the  lips  of  a  youth.  And,  without  confining  ourselves 
to  instances  which  may  be  reckoned  peculiar  and  extraor- 
dinary, we  would  assert  that,  in  all  cases,  a  marked  change 
passes  over  the  human  mind  when  the  heart  is  renewed  by 
the  influences  of  God's  Spirit.  We  are  not  guilty  of  the  ab- 
surdity of  maintaining  that  there  are  supernaturally  commu- 
nicated any  of  those  stores  of  information  which  are  ordina- 
rily gained  by  a  patient  and  pains-taking  application.  A  man 
will  not  become  more  of  an  astronomer  than  he  was  before, 
nor  more  of  a  chemist,  nor  more  of  a  linguist.  He  will  have 
no  greater  stock  of  knowledge  than  he  before  possessed  of 
subjects  which  most  occupy  the  learned  of  his  fellows.  And 
if  he  would  inform  himself  in  such  subjects,  the  man  of  reli- 
gion must  give  himself  to  the  same  labor  as  the  man  of  no 
religion,  and  sit  down,  with  the  same  industry,  to  the  trea- 
tise and  the  grammar.  The  peasant,  who  becomes  not  the 
philosopher  simply  because  his  mental  powers  have  been 
undisciplined,  will  not  leave  the  plough  for  the  orrery,  be- 
cause his  understanding  is  expanded  by  religion.  Educa- 
tion might  give,  whilst  religion  will  not  give,  the  powers  the 
philosophical  bent.  But  there  is  a  wide  difference  between 
the  strengthening  the  mind,  and  the  storing  it  with  informa- 
tion. We  may  plead  for  the  former  effect  without  at  all  sup- 
posing the  latter :  though  we  shall  come  afterwards  to  see 
that  information  of  the  loftiest  description  is  conveyed  through 
the  opening  of  the  Bible,  and  that,  consequently,  if  the  im- 
partment  of  knowledge  be  an  improving  thing  to  the  facul- 
ties, an  improvement,  the  most  marked,  must  result  from  con- 
version. But  we  confine  ourselves,  at  present,  to  the  state- 
ment of  a  fact.  We  assert  that,  in  all  cases,  a  man  is  intel- 
lectually, as  well  as  spiritually,  advantaged  through  becom- 
ing a  man  of  piety.  He  will  have  a  clearer  and  less-biassed 
judgment.    His  views  will  be  wider,  his  estimates  more  cor- 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  149 

rect.  His  understanding1,  having  been  exercised  on  truths 
the  most  stupendous,  will  be  more  competent  for  the  exami- 
nation of  what  is  difficult  or  obscure.  His  reason,  having 
learned  that  much  lies  beyond  her  province,  as  well  as  much 
within,  will  give  herself  to  inquiries  with  greater  humility 
and  greater  caution,  and  therefore,  almost  to  a  moral  cer- 
tainty, with  greater  success.  And  though  we  may  thus  seem 
rather  to  account  for  the  fact  than  to  prove  it,  let  it  be  re- 
membered that  this  fact,  being  an  effect,  can  only  be  esta- 
blished, either  by  pointing  out  causes,  or  by  appealing  to  ex- 
perience. The  appeal  to  experience  is,  perhaps,  the  correcter 
mode  of  the  two.  And  we,  therefore,  content  ourselves  with 
saying,  that  those  who  have  watched  character  most  nar- 
rowly will  bear  out  the  statement,  that  the  opening  of  God's 
word  is  followed,  ordinarily,  by  a  surprising  opening  of  man's 
faculties.  If  you  take  the  rude  and  illiterate  laborer,  you  will 
find  that  regeneration  proves  to  him  a  sort  of  intellectual,  as 
well  as  a  moral  renovation.  There  shall  generally  be  no 
ploughman  in  the  village  who  is  so  sound,  and  shrewd,  and 
clear-headed  a  man,  as  the  one  who  is  most  attentive  to  the 
salvation  of  his  soul.  And  if  an  individual  have  heretofore 
been  obtuse  and  unintelligent,  let  him  be  converted,  and  there 
shall  hereafter  be  commonly  a  quickness  and  animation  ;  so 
that  religion,  whose  prime  business  it  is  to  shed  light  upon 
the  heart,  shall  appear,  at  the  same  time,  to  have  thrown  fire 
into  the  eye.  We  do  not,  indeed,  assert  that  genius  and  talent 
are  imparted  at  the  new  birth.  But  that  it  is  amongst  the 
characteristics  of  godliness,  that  it  elevates  man  in  the  scale 
of  intellectual  being ;  that  it  makes  him  a  more  thinking,  and 
a  more  inquiring,  and  a  more  discriminating  creature  ;  that 
it  both  rectifies  and  strengthens  the  mental  vision ;  we  are 
guilty  of  no  exaggeration,  if  we  contend  for  this  as  univer- 
sally true  ;  and  this,  if  not  more  than  this,  is  asserted  in  the 
statement,  that  "  the  entrance  of  God's  words  giveth  light,  it 
giveth  understanding  to  the  simple." 

But  we  are  now,  in  the  second  place,  to  consider  certain 
of  the  reasons  of  this  fact.  What  is  there  in  the  entrance,  or, 
more  strictly,  in  the  opening,  of  God's  words,  which  may 


150  THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION. 

fairly  account  for  so  singular  a  result  ?  We  begin  by  remind- 
ing you  that  the  entrance,  or  opening  of  God's  word,  denotes 
the  application  of  scriptural  truth  to  the  heart  and  conscience 
by  that  Almighty  agent,  the  Holy  Ghost.  Hence,  a  saving, 
influential,  belief  in  the  disclosures  of  revelation  is  the  dis- 
tinguishing property  of  the  individuals  referred  to  in  our 
text.  And  in  inquiring,  therefore,  how  it  comes  to  pass  that 
understanding  is  given  to  the  simple,  we  are  to  proceed  on 
the  supposition,  that  he  is  endowed  with  real  faith  in  those 
mighty  truths  which  inspired  writers  were  commissioned  to 
make  known.  Thus  the  question  before  us  is  reduced  to 
this — what  connection  subsists  between  believing  in  the 
heart  the  words  of  God,  and  having  the  understanding  en- 
lightened and  strengthened  ? 

Now  our  great  difficulty  is  not  in  finding  an  answer  to 
this  question,  but  in  arranging  and  condensing  our  material 
of  reply.  We  would,  first,  remind  you  that  the  truths  which 
have  been  commended  to  the  belief  are  the  most  sublime 
and  spirit-stirring  of  all  that  can  engage  the  attention  of  man- 
kind. They  are  the  truths  of  eternity,  and  their  dimensions 
correspond  with  their  duration.  And  we  feel  that  there  must 
be  an  amazing  demand  upon  the  mind,  when,  after  long 
years  of  confinement  to  the  petty  affairs  of  this  perishing 
state,  it  is  summoned  to  the  survey  of  those  unmeasured 
wonders  which  crowd  the  platform  of  the  future.  I  take  a 
man  whose  attention  has  been  engrossed  by  commerce,  and 
whose  thoughts  have  been  given  wholly  to  the  schemings 
and  workings  of  trade.  May  we  not  affirm,  that,  when  the 
grace  of  God  takes  possession  of  this  man's  soul,  there  will 
occur  an  extraordinary  mental  revolution ;  and  that,  too, 
brought  round  by  the  magnificence  of  the  subjects  with 
which  his  spirit  has  newly  grown  conversant?  In  place  of 
oceans  which  can  be  fathomed,  and  weighed,  and  measured, 
there  is  an  expanse  before  him  without  a  shore.  In  place  of 
carrying  on  intercourse  with  none  but  the  beings  of  his  own 
race,  separated  from  him  by  a  few  leagues  of  distance,  he 
sends  his  vessels,  as  it  were,  to  lands  tenanted  by  the  crea- 
tures of  a  more  glorious  intelligence,  and  they  return  to  him. 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  151 

freighted  with  a  produce  costlier,  and  brighter,  than  earthly- 
merchandise.  In  place  of  acquaintance  with  no  ledger  save 
the  one  in  which  he  casts  up  the  debtor  and  creditor  of  a 
few  fellow-worms,  there  rises  before  him  the  vast  volume  of 
doomsday,  and  his  gazings  are  often  on  the  final  balance- 
sheet  of  the  human  population.  And  we  simply  demand 
whether  you  think  it  possible,  that  there  should  be  this  over- 
powering accession  to  the  objects  which  occupy  the  mind, 
and  yet  that  the  mind  itself  should  not  grow,  and  enlarge, 
and  strengthen  ?  The  mind  which  deals  with  both  worlds 
cannot,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be  so  contracted  as  that 
which  deals  only  with  one.  Can  that  be  a  large  understand- 
ing which  is  conversant  with  nothing  but  the  scenery  of  a 
finite  existence ;  or,  rather,  if  heretofore  the  understanding 
have  grasped  nothing  but  the  facts  of  an  hour  and  a  league, 
and  these  have  appeared  to  crowd  it  to  the  full,  must  there 
not  have  taken  place  a  scarcely  measureable  enlargement,  if 
eternity  and  infinity  be  now  gathered  within  itsspreadings? 
Besides,  there  will  be  a  sounder  and  more  correct  judgment 
upon  events  and  probabilities,  when  reference  is  always  made 
to  the  first  cause,  than  when  regard  is  had  only  to  second 
causes.  There  will  be  a  fairer  and  more  honest  deliberation, 
when  the  passions  are  under  the  sway  of  divine  promises 
and  threatenings,  than  when  there  is  no  higher  restraint  than 
the  ill-defined  ones  of  human  honor.  So  that  it  would  seem 
altogether  to  be  expected,  that,  on  the  mere  account  of  the 
might  and  vastness  of  the  truths,  into  acquaintance  with 
which  the  mind  is  introduced,  the  mind  itself  will  send  forth 
latent  and  unsuspected  powers,  or  even  shoot  up  into  a  new 
stature  which  shall  put  to  shame  its  former  dwarflshness. 
Thus  the  opening  of  God's  words  is  accompanied,  or  fol- 
lowed, by  the  rousing  up  of  dormant  energies.  The  sphere, 
which  the  sand-grain  seemed  to  fill,  is  required  to  dilate,  and 
take  in  immensity.  The  arm  which  plucked  a  leaf,  or  lifted 
a  pebble,  must  strive  to  wrench  up  the  oak,  and  raise  the 
mountain.  And  in  striving  it  strengthens.  The  mind,  em- 
ployed on  what  is  great,  becomes  itself  greater  ;  busied  with 
what  is  bright,  it  becomes  itself  brighter.  Let  the  man,  there- 


152  THE    POWER    Of     RELIGION. 

fore,  have  been  even  of  weak  mental  capacity — conversion 
will  give  something  of  nerve  and  tone  to  that  capacity.  Be- 
sides, it  is  a  thing  worthy  your  remark,  and  so  obvious  as 
scarcely  to  be  overlooked,  that  all  love,  except  the  love  of 
God,  reduces  and  contracts  the  soul.  If  a  man  be  a  covetous 
man,  fastening  the  might  of  his  affections  upon  money,  you 
will  ordinarily  find  him,  in  every  respect,  a  narrow-minded 
being.  His  intellect,  whatever  its  natural  capacities,  will  em- 
brace little  or  nothing  beyond  modes  of  accumulation,  and 
will  grow  practically  unable  to  over-pass  the  circles  of  profit 
and  loss.  It  is  just  the  same,  if  a  man's  love  be  fixed  on  re- 
putation. We  hold  it  impossible  there  should  be  enlarged 
views,  when  those  views  centre  in  one's  self.  There  may  be 
lofty  and  far-spreading  schemes  ;  for  ambition  can  look  upon 
a  world,  and  think  it  too  small  for  its  marchings.  But  so 
long  as  those  schemes  are  schemes  for  the  aggrandizement 
of  self,  they  may  take  a  creation  for  their  sphere,  and  yet  re- 
quire to  be  described  as  pitiful  and  niggardly.  It  is  no  mark 
of  an  ample  mind  that  it  can  be  filled  with  an  unit.  And 
many  a  philanthropist  laboring  quietly  and  unobtrusively, 
for  the  well-being  of  a  solitary  parish,  or  neighborhood,  has 
thereby  proved  himself  a  larger-hearted  and  a  larger-souled 
creature  than  an  Alexander,  boundless  in  his  graspings  ;  and 
that,  too,  upon  the  clear  and  straightforward  principle,  that 
a  heart  which  holds  only  one's-self,  is  a  narrower  and  more 
circumscribed  thing  than  another  which  contains  a  multi- 
tude of  our  fellows.  The  truth  is,  that  all  objects  of  love,  ex- 
cept God,  are  smaller  than  the  heart  itself.  They  can  only 
fill  the  heart,  through  the  heart  being  contracted  and  nar- 
rowed. The  human  soul  was  framed,  in  its  first  creation,  to 
that  wideness  as  to  be  capable  of  enjoying  God,  though  not 
of  fully  comprehending  him.  And  it  still  retains  so  much  of 
its  glorious  original,  that  "  all  other  things  gather  it  in  and 
straiten  it  from  its  natural  size."*  Whereas  the  love  of  God 
not  only  occupies  it  to  the  full,  but,  inasmuch  as  in  its  broad- 
est enlargement  it  is  still  infinitely  too  narrow  for  God,  this 

*  Leighlon. 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  153 

love,  as  it  were,  doth  stretch  and  expand  it,  enabling  it  to 
hold  more,  and  giving  it,  at  the  same  time,  more  to  hold. 
Thus,  since  the  converted  man  loves  God,  and  this  new  ob- 
ject of  love  demands  amplitude  of  dwelling,  we  contend  that, 
as  a  consequence  on  conversion,  there  will  be  extension  of 
the  whole  mental  apparatus.  And  if  you  find  the  man  here- 
after, as  we  are  bold  to  say  you  will  find  him,  exercising  a 
corrector  judgment,  and  displaying  a  shrewder  sense,  than 
had  beforetime  seemed  in  his  possession,  you  have  only  to 
advance,  in  explanation  of  the  phenomenon,  that  "  the  en- 
trance of  God's  word  giveth  understanding  to  the  simple." 

But  we  may  state  yet  more  strongly,  and  also  multiply  our 
reasons,  why,  on  becoming  religious,  the  simple  man  should 
become  more  a  man  of  understanding.  Let  it  just  be  consid- 
ered that  man,  whilst  left  in  his  state  of  natural  corruption, 
is  a  being,  in  every  respect,  disorganized.  Under  no  point  of 
view  is  he  the  creature  that  he  was,  as  fashioned,  originally, 
after  the  image  of  his  Maker.  He  can  no  longer  act  out  any 
of  the  great  ends  of  his  creation  :  a  total  disability  of  loving 
and  obeying  the  Almighty  having  been  fastened  on  him  by 
his  forefather's  apostasy.  And  when  this  degraded  and  ruined 
being  is  subjected  to  the  saving  operations  of  the  Spirit  of 
God,  he  is  said  to  be  renewed,  or  re-modelled,  after  the  long- 
lost  resemblance.  The  conscience  becomes  disquieted  ;  and 
this  is  conviction.  The  heart  and  its  affections  are  given 
back  to  God ;  and  this  is  conversion.  Now  we  do  not  say, 
that,  by  this  great  moral  renovation,  the  injuries  which  the 
fall  caused  to  the  human  intellect  are  necessarily  repaired. 
Nevertheless,  we  shall  assert  that  the  moral  improvement  is 
just  calculated  to  bring  about  an  intellectual.  You  all  know 
how  intimately  mind  and  body  are  associated.  One  plays 
wonderfully  on  the  other,  so  that  disease  of  body  may  often 
be  traced  to  gloom  of  mind,  and,  conversely,  gloom  of  mind 
be  proved  to  originate  in  disease  of  body.  And  if  there  be  this 
close  connection  between  mental  and  corporeal,  shall  we 
suppose  there  is  none  between  mental  and  moral  ?  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  clear  that  the  association,  as  before  hinted,  is 
of  the  strictest.  What  an  influence  do  the  passions  exercise 
20 


154  THF,    POWER    OJc     RELIGION. 

upon  the  judgment !  How  is  the  voice  of  reason  drowned  in 
the  cry  of  impetuous  desires  !  To  what  absurdities  will  the 
understanding  give  assent,  when  the  will  has  resolved  to  take 
up  their  advocacy !  How  little  way  can  truth  make  with  the 
intellect,  when  there  is  something  in  its  character  which  op- 
poses the  inclination  !  And  what  do  we  infer  from  these  un- 
deniable facts?  Simply,  that  whilst  the  moral  functions  are 
disordered,  so  likewise  must  be  the  mental.  Simply,  that  so 
Ions;  as  the  heart  is  depraved  and  disturbed,  the  mind,  in  a 
certain  degree,  must  itself  be  out.  of  joint.  And  if  you  would 
give  the  mind  fair  play,  there  must  be  applied  straightway  a 
corrective  process  to  the  heart.  You  cannot  tell  what  a  man's 
understanding  is,  so  long  as  he  continues  "  dead,  in  tres- 
passes and  sins."*  There  is  a  mountain  upon  it.  It  is  tyran- 
nized over  by  lusts,  and  passions,  and  affections,  and  appe- 
tites. It  is  compelled  to  form  wrong  estimates,  and  to  arrive 
at  wrong  conclusions.  It  is  not  allowed  to  receive  as  truth 
what  the  carnal  nature  has  an  interest  in  rejecting  as  false- 
hood. And  what  hope,  then,  is  there  that  the  intellect  will 
show  itself  what  it  actually  is?  It  may  be  gigantic,  when  it 
seems  only  puny  ;  respectable,  when  it  passes  for  despicable. 
And  thus  we  bring  you  back  again  to  the  argument  in  hand. 
We  prove  to  you,  that  a  weak  mind  may  be  so  connected 
with  a  wicked  heart,  that  to  act  on  the  wickedness  would  be 
going  far  towards  acting  on  the  weakness.  Oh,  fatal  down- 
fall of  man's  first  parent — the  image  could  not  be  shivered 
in  its  moral  features,  and  remain  untouched  in  its  intellec- 
tual. Well  has  it  been  said  that  possibly  "  Athens  was  but 
the  rudiments  of  Paradise,  and  an  Aristotle  only  the  rubbish 
of  Adam."t  But  if  there  be  a  moral  renovation,  there  will, 
from  the  connection  now  traced,  be  also,  to  a  certain  extent, 
an  intellectual.  And  hence,  since  at  the  entrance  of  God's 
words  the  man  is  renewed  in  holiness,  we  have  a  right  to 
expect  that  he  will  also  be  renewed  in  understanding.  If  ad- 
ditional mental  capacity  be  not  given,  what  he  before  pos- 
sessed is  allowed  to  develope  itself;  and  this  is  practically 

»  Ephesians,  2  :  I.-  +  Dr. South. 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  155 

the  same  as  though  there  were  a  fresh  gift.  If  he  receive  not 
actually  a  greater  measure  of  understanding,  still,  inasmuch 
as  the  stern  embargo  which  the  heart  laid  on  the  intellect  is 
mercifully  removed,  he  is,  virtually,  under  the  same  circum- 
stances as  if  a  new  portion  were  bestowed.  Thus,  with  all 
the  precision  which  can  fairly  be  required  in  the  interpreta- 
tion of  such  a  phrase,  we  prove  that,  since  man  is  elevated 
in  the  scale  of  intelligence  through  being  raised  from  his 
moral  degradation,  we  are  bound  to  conclude  with  the 
Psalmist,  that  "  the  entrance  of  God's  words  giveth  light,  it 
giveth  understanding  to  the  simple.'' 

We  have  yet  one  more  reason  to  advance,  explanatory  of 
the  connection  which  we  set  ourselves  to  trace.  You  observe 
that  the  entrance,  or  the  opening,  of  God's  words  denotes 
such  an  application  to  the  soul  of  the  truths  of  revelation  that 
they  become  influential  on  the  life  and  conversation.  Now, 
why  should  a  man  who  lives  by  the  Bible  be,  practically, 
possessed  of  a  stronger  and  clearer  understanding-  than,  ap- 
parently, belonged  to  him  ere  this  rule  was  adopted?  The 
answer  may  be  found  in  the  facts,  that  it  is  a  believer's  duty, 
whensoever  he  lacks  wisdom,  to  ask  it  of  God,  and  a  believ- 
er's privilege,  never  to  be  sent  empty  away.  In  all  those 
cases  which  require  the  exercise  of  a  sound  discretion — 
which  present  opposite  difficulties,  rendering  decision  on  a 
course  painfully  perplexing — who  is  likely  to  display  the 
soundest  judgment?  the  man  who  acts  for  himself,  or 
another  who  seeks,  and  obtains,  direction  from  above  ?  We 
plead  not  for  rash  and  unfounded  expectations  of  a  divine 
interference  on  our  behalf.  We  simply  hold  fast  to  the  promis- 
es of  Scripture.  And  we  pronounce  it  to  be  beyond  all  per- 
adventure,  that,  if  the  Bible  be  true,  it  is  also  true  that  they 
who  have  been  translated  from  darkness  to  light  are  never 
left  without  the  aids  of  God's  Spirit,  unless  they  seek  not 
those  aids,  or  seek  them  not  earnestly  and  faithfully.  If  I  have 
known  the  entrance,  or  the  opening  of  the  word  of  our  God, 
then  I  have  practically  learned  such  lessons  as  these :  "  lean 
not  to  thine  own  understanding ;"  "  in  all  thy  ways  acknow- 


156  THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION. 

ledge  him,  and  he  shall  direct  thy  paths."*  And  if  I  am  not  to 
lean  to  mine  own  understanding1,  and  if  I  have  the  privilege 
of  being  directed  by  a  higher  than  mine  own,  it  is  evident 
that  I  occupy,  practically,  the  position  of  one  to  whom  has 
been  given  an  increased  measure  of  understanding;  and 
what,  consequently,  is  to  prevent  the  simple  man,  whose  rule 
of  life  is  God's  word,  from  acting  in  all  circumstances,  whe- 
ther ordinary  or  extraordinary,  with  such  prudence,  and  dis- 
cretion, and  judgment,  that  he  shall  make  good,  to  the  very 
letter,  the  assertion,  that  "  the  entrance  of  God's  words  giveth 
light,  it  giveth  understanding  to  the  simple?" 

Now  it  is  not  possible  to  gather  into  a  single  discourse  the 
varied  reasons  which  might  be  given  for  the  fact  under  re- 
view. But  the  causes  already  adduced  will  serve  to  show, 
that  the  fact  is,  at  least,  by  no  means  unaccountable ;  but 
that,  on  the  contrary,  the  connection  is  so  necessary  between 
spiritual  improvement  and  intellectual,  that  amongst  the  ac- 
companiments of  a  renewed  heart  we  may  justly  reckon  a 
clearer  head. 

We  desire,  in  conclusion,  to  press  upon  you  once  more  the 
worth  of  the  Bible,  and  then  to  wind  up  our  subject  with  a 
word  of  exhortation . 

Of  all  the  boons  which  God  has  bestowed  on  this  apostate 
and  orphaned  creation,  we  are  bound  to  say  that  the  Bible  is 
the  noblest  and  most  precious.  We  bring  not  into  compari- 
son with  this  illustrious  donation  the  glorious  sun-light,  nor 
the  rich  sustenance  which  is  poured  forth  from  the  store- 
houses of  the  earth,  nor  that  existence  itself  which  allows  us, 
though  dust,  to  soar  into  companionship  with  angels.  The 
Bible  is  the  developement  of  man's  immortality,  the  guide 
which  informs  him  how  he  may  move  off  triumphantly  from 
a  contracted  and  temporary  scene,  and  grasp  destinies  of  un- 
bounded splendor,  eternity  his  life-time  and  infinity  his  home. 
It  is  the  record  which  tells  us  that  this  rebellious  section  of 
God's  unlimited  empire  is  not  excluded  from  our  Maker's 
compassions ;  but  that  the  creatures  who  move  upon  its  sur- 

*  Proverbs,  3  : 5,  6. 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  157 

face,  though  they  have  basely  sepulchred  in  sinfulness  and 
corruption  the  magnificence  of  their  nature,  are  yet  so  dear 
in  their  ruin  to  Him  who  first  formed  them,  that  he  hath 
bowed  down  the  heavens  in  order  to  open  their  graves.  Oh, 
you  have  only  to  think  what  a  change  would  pass  on  the 
aspect  of  our  race,  if  the  Bible  were  suddenly  withdrawn, 
and  all  remembrance  of  it  swept  away,  and  you  arrive  at 
some  faint  notion  of  the  worth  of  the  volume.  Take  from 
Christendom  the  Bible,  and  you  have  taken  the  moral  chart 
by  which  alone  its  population  can  be  guided.  Ignorant  of  the 
nature  of  God,  and  only  guessing  at  their  own  immortality, 
the  tens  of  thousands  would  be  as  mariners,  tossed  on  a  wide 
ocean,  without  a  pole-star,  and  without  a  compass.  It  were 
to  mantle  the  earth  with  a  more  than  Egyptian  darkness :  it 
were  to  dry  up  the  fountains  of  human  happiness:  it  were 
to  take  the  tides  from  our  waters,  and  leave  them  stagnant, 
and  the  stars  from  our  heavens,  and  leave  them  in  sackcloth, 
and  the  verdure  from  our  vallies,  and  leave  them  in  barren- 
ness :  it  were  to  make  the  present  all  recklessness  and  the 
future  all  hopelessness — the  maniac's  revelry  and  then  the 
fiend's  imprisonment— if  you  could  annihilate  that  precious 
volume  which  tells  us  of  God  and  of  Christ,  and  unveils  im- 
mortality, and  instructs  in  duty,  and  woos  to  glory.  Such  is 
the  Bible.  Prize  ye  it,  and  study  it  more  and  more.  Prize  it, 
as  ye  are  immortal  beings — for  it  guides  to  the  New  Jerusa- 
lem. Prize  it,  as  ye  are  intellectual  beings— for  it  "  giveth 
understanding  to  the  simple." 

We  have  now  only  space  for  a  brief  word  of  exhortation, 
and  we  ask  for  it  your  closest  attention.  A  minister,  if  he 
would  be  faithful  to  his  calling,  must  mark  the  signs  of  the 
times,  and  endeavor  so  to  shape  his  addresses  that  they  may 
meet,  and  expose,  the  prominent  errors.  Now  we  think  that, 
in  our  own  day,  there  is  a  strong  disposition  to  put  aside  the 
Bible,  and  to  seek  out  other  agency  for  accomplishing  results 
which  God  hath  appointed  it  to  effect.  We  fear,  for  example, 
that  the  intellectual  benefits  of  Scriptural  knowledge  are 
well-nigh  entirely  overlooked  ;  and  that,  in  the  efforts  to 
raise  the  standard  of  mind,  there  is  little  or  no  recognition 


158  THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION. 

of  the  mighty  principle,  that  the  Bible  outweighs  ten  thou- 
sand Encyclopaedias.  And  we  are  fearful  on  your  account, 
lest  something  of  this  national  substitution  of  human  litera- 
ture for  divine  should  gain  footing  in  your  households.  We 
fear  lest,  in  the  business  of  education,  you  should  separate 
broadly  that  teaching  which  has  to  do  with  the  salvation  of 
the  soul,  from  that  which  has  to  do  with  the  improvement  of 
the  mind.  We  refer  to  this  point,  because  we  think  ourselves 
bound,  by  the  vows  of  our  calling,  to  take  every  opportunity 
of  stating  the  duties  which  devolve  on  you  as  parents  or 
guardians.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  it  may  be  affirmed  that 
souls,  those  mysterious  and  imperishable  things,  are  given 
into  the  custody  of  every  father  of  a  family.  And  we  are  per- 
suaded that  if  there  be  one  thing  on  this  earth  which  draws, 
more  than  another,  the  sorrowing  regards  of  the  world  of 
spirits,  it  must  be  the  system  of  education  pursued  by  the 
o-enerality  of  parents.  The  entering  a  room  gracefully  is  a 
vast  deal  more  attended  to  than  the  entering  into  heaven  ; 
and  you  would  conclude  that  the  grand  thing  for  which 
God  had  sent  the  child  into  the  world,  was  that  it  might 
catch  the  Italian  accent,  and  be  quite  at  home  in  every  note 
of  the  o-amut.  Christianity,  indeed,  is  not  at  variance  witli 
the  elegancies  of  life  :  she  can  use  them  as  her  handmaids, 
and  give  them  a  beauty  of  which,  out  of  her  service,  they 
are  utterly  destitute.  We  wage  no  war,  therefore,  with  ac- 
complishments, any  more  than  with  the  solid  acquirements 
of  a  liberal  education.  We  are  only  anxious  to  press  on  you 
the  necessity  that  ye  make  religion  the  basis  of  your  system. 
We  admit,  in  all  its  breadth,  the  truth  of  the  saying,  that 
knowledge  is  power.  It  is  power — aye,  a  fatal,  and  a  peril- 
ous. Neither  the  might  of  armies,  nor  the  scheming  of  poli- 
ticians, avails  any  thing  against  this  power.  The  school- 
master, as  we  have  already  hinted,  is  the  grand  engine  for 
revolutionizing  a  world.  Let  knowledge  be  generally  dif- 
fused, and  the  fear  of  God  be  kept  in  the  background,  and  you 
have  done  the  same  for  a  country  as  if  you  had  laid  the 
gunpowder  under  its  every  institution  :  there  needs  only  the 
igniting  of  a  match,  and  the  land  shall  be  strewed  with  the 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  159 

fragments  of  all  that  is  glorious  and  venerable.  But,  never- 
thelesss,  we  would  not  have  knowledge  chained  up  in  the 
college  and  monastery,  because  its  arm  is  endowed  with  such 
sinew  and  nerve.  We  would  not  put  forth  a  finger  to  uphold 
a  system  which  we  believed  based  on  the  ignorance  of  a 
population.  We  only  desire  to  see  knowledge  of  God  ad- 
vance as  the  vanguard  of  the  host  of  information.  We  are 
sure  that  an  intellectual  must  be  a  mighty  peasantry.  But 
we  are  equally  sure  that  an  intellectual,  and  a  godless,  will 
demonstrate  their  might,  by  the  ease  with  which  they  crush 
whatever  most  adorns  and  elevates  a  kingdom.  And  iri 
speaking  to  you  individually  of  your  duties  as  parents,  we 
would  bring  into  the  family-circle  the  principles  thus  an- 
nounced as  applicable  to  the  national.  We  want  not  to  set 
bounds  to  the  amount  of  knowledge  which  you  strive  to  im- 
part. But  never  let  this  remembrance  be  swept  from  your 
minds — that,  to  give  a  child  knowledge  without  endeavor- 
ing, at  the  same  time,  to  add  to  knowledge  godliness,  is  to 
do  your  best  to  throw  the  momentum  of  the  giant  into  the 
arm  of  the  idiot ;  to  construct  a  machinery  which  may  help 
to  move  a  world,  and  to  leave  out  the  spring  which  would 
insure  its  moving  it  only  towards  God.  We  would  have  you 
shun,  even  as  you  would  the  tampering  with  an  immortality 
deposited  in  your  keeping,  the  imitating  what  goes  on  in  a 
thousand  of  the  households  of  a  professedly  christian  neigh- 
borhood— the  children  can  pronounce  well,  and  they  can 
step  well,  and  they  can  play  well ;  the  mother  proudly  ex- 
hibits the  specimens  of  proficiency  in  painting,  and  the 
father  dwells,  with  an  air  of  delight,  on  the  progress  made 
in  Virgil  and  Homer — but  if  you  inquire  how  far  these  pa- 
rents are  providing  for  their  own  in  the  things  of  eternity, 
why,  the  children  have  perhaps  learned  the  Church  Cate- 
chism, and  they  read  a  chapter  occasionally  on  a  Sunday 
afternoon.  And  that  ye  may  avoid  the  mistake  into  which, 
as  we  think,  the  temper  of  the  times  is  but  too  likely  to  lead 
you,  we  would  have  you  learn,  from  the  subject  which  has 
now  been  discussed,  that,  in  educating  your  children  for  the 
next  life,  you  best  educate  them  for  the  present.    We  give  it 


160  THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION. 

you,  as  a  truth,  made  known  to  us  by  God,  and,  at  the  same 
time  demonstrable  by  reason,  that,  in  going  through  the 
courses  of  Bible-instruction,  there  is  better  mental  discipline, 
whether  for  a  child  or  an  adult,  than  in  any  of  the  cleverly 
devised  methods  for  opening  and  strengthening  the  facul- 
ties. We  say  not  that  the  study  of  Scripture  should  exclude 
other  studies,  or  be  substituted  for  them.  Natural  philosophy 
is  not  to  be  learned  from  Scripture  nor  general  history ; 
and  we  would  not  have  such  matters  neglected.  But  we 
say  that  Scriptural  study  should  be,  at  once,  the  ground- 
work and  companion  of  every  other  ;  and  that  the  mind  will 
advance,  with  the  firmest  and  most  dominant  step,  into  the 
various  departments  of  knowledge,  when  familiarized  with 
the  truths  of  revelation,  and  accustomed  to  walk  their  unlim- 
ited spreadings.  If  parents  had  no  higher  ambition  than 
to  make  their  children  intellectual,  they  would  act  most 
shrewdly  by  acting  as  though  desirous  to  make  them  reli- 
gious. It  is  thus  we  apply  our  subject  to  those  amongst  you 
who  are  parents  or  guardians.  But  it  applies  to  all.  We  call 
upon  you  all  to  observe,  that,  in  place  of  being  beneath  the 
notice  of  the  intellectual,  the  Bible  is  the  great  nourisher  of 
intellect.  We  require  of  you  to  bear  away  to  your  homes  as 
an  undeniable  fact,  that  to  care  for  the  soul  is  to  cultivate 
the  mind.  We  will  not  yield  the  culture  of  the  understand- 
ing to  earthly  husbandmen.  There  are  heavenly  ministers 
who  water  it  with  a  choicer  dew,  and  pour  on  it  the  beams 
of  a  more  brilliant  sun,  and  prune  its  branches  with  a  kinder 
and  more  skillful  hand.  We  will  not  give  up  reason  to  stand 
always  as  a  priestess  at  the  altars  of  human  philosophy.  She 
hath  a  more  majestic  temple  to  tread,  and  more  beauteous 
robes  wherein  to  walk,  and  incense  rarer  and  more  fragrant 
to  burn  in  golden  censers.  She  does  well  when  exploring 
boldly  God's  visible  works.  She  does  better,  when  she 
meekly  submits  to  spiritual  teaching,  and  sits,  as  a  child,  at 
the  Saviors  feet :  for  then  shall  she  experience  the  truth,  that 
"  the  entrance  of  God's  words  giveth  light  and  understand- 
ing." And,  therefore,  be  ye  heedful — the  young  amongst 
you  more  especially — that  ye  be  not  ashamed  of  piety,  as 


THE    POWER    OF    RELIGION.  161' 

though  it  argued  a  feeble  capacity.  Rather  be  assured,  foras- 
much as  revelation  is  the  great  strengthener  of  reason,  that 
the  march  of  mind  which  leaves  the  Bible  in  the  rear  is  an 
advance,  like  that  of  our  first  parents  in  Paradise,  towards 
knowledge,  but,  at  the  same  time,  towards  death. 


21 


SERMON  VIII 


THE  PROVISION  MADE  BY  GOD  FOR  THE  POOR. 


"  Thou,  O  God,  hast  prepared  of  thy  goodness  for  the  poor."— Psalm  68  :  10. 

We  think  it  one  of  the  most  remarkable  sayings  of  holy- 
writ,  that  "  the  poor  shall  never  cease  out  of  the  land."*  The 
words  may  be  regarded  as  a  prophecy,  and  their  fulfilment 
has  been  every  way  most  surprising.  Amid  all  the  revolu- 
tions whereof  our  earth  has  been  the  scene — revolutions 
which  have  presented  to  us  empire  after  empire  rising  to  the 
summit  of  greatness,  and  gathering  into  its  provinces  the 
wealth  of  the  world — there  has  never  been  a  nation  over 
which  riches  have  been  equally  diffused.  The  many  have 
had  poverty  for  their  portion,  whilst  abundance  has  been 
poured  into  the  laps  of  the  few.  And  if  you  refuse  to  con- 
sider this  as  a  divine  appointment,  it  will  be  hard,  we  think, 
to  account  for  the  phenomenon.  It  might  have  been  expect- 
ed that  the  distribution  of  physical  comfort  would  be  propor- 
tioned to  the  amount  of  physical  strength ;  so  that  numbers 
would  dictate  to  individuals ;  and  the  power  of  bone  and 
muscle  be  brought  to  bear  on  the  production  of  equality  of 
circumstance.  And  just  in  the  degree  that  we  recognize  the 
fulfilment  of  prophecy  in  the  continuance  of  poverty,  we 
must  be  prepared  to  allow,  that  the  unequal  distribution  of 
temporal  advantages  is  a  result  of  the  Almighty's  good  plea- 
sure ;  and  that,  consequently,  all  popular  harangues  on  equa- 
lity of  rights  are  nothing  less  than  contradictions  to  the  as- 

*  Deuteronomy,  15  :  11. 


god's  provision  for  the  toor.  163 

sertions,  "  the  rich  and  poor  meet  together,  the  Lord  is  the 
maker  of  them  all."* 

There  is  no  easier  subject  for  stormy  and  factious  decla- 
mation, than  the  hard  and  unnatural  estate  of  poverty.  The 
slightest  reference  to  it  engages,  at  once,  the  feelings  of  a 
multitude.  And  whensoever  a  bold  and  talented  demagogue 
works  up  into  his  speeches  the  doctrine,  that  all  men  are 
born  with  equal  rights,  he  plies  his  audience  with  the  strong- 
est excitement,  but  does,  at  the  same  time,  greatest  despite  to 
the  word  of  inspiration.  We  hold  it  to  be  clear  to  every  stu- 
dent of  Scripture,  that  God  hath  ordained  successive  ranks 
in  human  society,  and  that  uniformity  of  earthly  allotment 
was  never  contemplated  by  his  providence.  And,  therefore, 
do  we  likewise  hold,  that  attempts  at  equalization  would  be 
tantamount  to  rebellion  against  the  appointments  of  heaven  ; 
and  that  infidelity  must  upheave  the  altars  of  a  land,  ere  its 
inhabitants  could  venture  out  on  such  enterprise.  It  is  just 
that  enterprise  which  may  be  looked  for  as  the  offspring  of 
a  doctrine,  demonstrable  only  when  the  Bible  shall  have  pe- 
rished— the  doctrine,  that  all  power  emanates  from  the  peo- 
ple. When  a  population  have  been  nursed  into  the  belief 
that  sovereignty  is  theirs,  the  likelihood  is  that  the  first  as- 
sertion of  this  sovereignty  will  be  the  seizing  the  possessions 
of  those  who  gave  them  the  lesson.  The  readiest  way  of  over- 
turning the  rights  of  property,  is  to  introduce  false  theories 
on  the  origin  of  power.  And  they  must,  at  the  least,  be  short- 
sighted calculators,  who,  having  taught  our  mechanics  and 
laborers  that  they  are  the  true  king  of  the  land,  expect  them 
to  continue  well  contented  with  the  title,  and  quite  willing 
that  superiors  should  keep  the  advantages. 

But  our  main  concern  lies,  at  present,  with  the  fact,  that 
poverty  is  an  appointment  of  God.  We  assume  this  fact  as 
one  not  to  be  questioned  by  a  christian  congregation.  And 
when  we  have  fastened  on  the  truth  that  God  hath  appointed 
poverty,  we  must  set  ourselves  to  ascertain  that  God  hath 
not  overlooked  the  poor ;  there  being  nothing  upon  which 
we  may  have  a  greater  prior  certainty  than  on  this,  namely, 

*  Proverbs,  22  :  2. 


J64  god's  provision   for  the  roon. 

that  if  it  be  God's  will  that  the  poor  should  not  cease,  it  must 
also  be  his  arrangement  that  the  poor  should  be  cared  for. 

Now  our  text  is  a  concise,  but  striking,  declaration  that 
the  solicitudes  of  God  are  engaged  on  the  side  of  the  poor. 
It  would  seem,  indeed,  from  the  context,  that  spiritual  bless- 
ings were  specially  intended  by  the  Psalmist,  when  address- 
ing himself  to  God  in  the  words  to  be  examined.  He  speaks 
of  the  Almighty  as  sending  a  plentiful  rain,  and  refreshing 
the  weary  inheritance.  And  we  think  it  required  by  the  na- 
ture of  this  imagery,  as  compared  with  the  rest  of  scriptural 
metaphor,  that  we  understand  an  outpouring  of  the  Spirit  as 
the  mercy  which  David  commemorates.  But  still  there  is 
nothing,  either  in  the  words  themselves,  or  in  those  which 
accompany  them,  requiring  that  we  circumscribe  the  bear- 
ings of  the  passage.  We  may  take  it  as  a  general  truth,  that 
"  thou,  O  God,  hast  prepared  of  thy  goodness  for  the  poor/' 
And  we  shall,  therefore,  endeavor  to  turn  your  thoughts  on 
two  separate  inquiries ;  examining,  in  the  first  place,  how  the 
assertion  holds  good  in  temporal  things,  and,  in  the  second 
place,  how  it  holds  good  in  spiritual  things.  This  second  in- 
quiry is  the  more  closely  connected  with  the  business  of  our 
Sabbath  assemblings,  and  we  shall  give  it,  therefore,  the 
main  of  our  time  and  attention. 

Now  if  we  set  ourselves  to  establish  as  a  matter-of-fact,  that, 
in  temporal  things,  God,  of  his  goodness,  has  prepared  for 
the  poor,  we  seem,  at  once,  arrested  in  our  demonstration  by 
that  undeniable  wretchedness  which  lies  heavy  on  the  mass 
of  a  crowded  population.  But  it  would  be  altogether"  wrong 
that  we  should  judge  any  appointment  of  God,  without  re- 
ference being  had  to  the  distortions  which  man  has  himself 
introduced.  We  feel  assured  upon  the  point,  that,  in  con- 
structing the  framework  of  society,  God  designed  that  one 
class  should  depend  greatly  on  another,  and  that  some  should 
have  nothing  but  a  hard-earned  pittance,  whilst  others  were 
charioted  in  plenty.  But  we  are  to  the  full  as  clear  upon 
another  point,  namely,  that  if  in  any  case  there  be  positive 
destitution,  it  is  not  to  be  referred  to  the  established  ordi- 
nance of  God,  but  only  to  some  forgetfulness,  or  violation, 


GOD  S    PROVISION     IOR    THE     TOOK.  165 

of  that  mutual  dependence  which  this  ordinance  would  en- 
courage. There  has  never  yet  been  the  state  of  things— and, 
in  spite  of  the  fears  of  political  economists,  we  know  not  that 
there  ever  will  be — in  which  the  produce  of  this  earth  suf- 
ficed not  for  its  population.  God  has  given  the  globe  for  the 
dwelling-place  of  man,  and,  causing  that  its  vallies  stand 
thick  with  corn,  scatters  food  over  its  surface  to  satisfy  the 
wants  of  an  enormous  and  multiplying  tenantry.  And  un- 
less you  can  show  that  he  hath  sent  such  excess  of  inhabi- 
tants into  this  district  of  his  empire,  that  there  cannot  be 
wrung  for  them  sufficiency  of  sustenance  from  the  overtask- 
ed soil,  you  will  have  made  no  advances  towards  a  demon- 
stration, that  the  veriest  outcast,  worn  to  a  mere  skeleton  bv 
famine,  disproves  the  assertion,  that  God,  of  his  goodness, 
has  prepared  for  the  poor.  The  question  is  not  whether  every 
poor  man  obtains  enough :  for  this  brings  into  the  account 
human  management.  It  is  simply,  whether  God  has  given 
enough  :  for  this  limits  our  thoughts  to  divine  appointment. 
And  beyond  all  doubt,  when  we  take  this  plain  and  straight- 
forward view  of  the  subject,  we  cannot  put  from  us  the  con- 
clusion, that  God,  of  his  goodness,  has  prepared  for  the  poor. 
If  he  had  so  limited  the  productiveness  of  the  earth  that  it 
would  yield  only  enough  for  a  fraction  of  its  inhabitants ; 
and  if  he  had  allowed  that  the  storehouses  of  nature  might 
be  exhausted  by  the  demands  of  the  myriads  whom  he  sum- 
moned into  life  ;  there  would  lie  objections  against  a  state- 
ment which  ascribes  to  his  goodness  the  having  made 
universal  provision.  But  if — and  we  have  here  a  point  ...  .'■ 
mitting  not  of  controversy — he  have  always  hitherto  caused 
that  the  productions  of  the  globe  should  keep  pace  with  its 
population,  it  is  nothing  better  than  the  reasoning  of  a  child, 
that  God  hath  not  provided  for  the  poor,  because,  through 
maladministration  of  his  bounties,  the  poor  may,  in  certain 
cases,  have  been  wholly  unprovided  for. 

And  it  is  worth  your  while  to  observe,  that  God  prepared 
more  than  mere  sustenance  for  the  poor,  when  he  endowed 
the  soil  with  its  surprising,  and  still  undeveloped  productive- 
ness. We  are  indebted  to  the  ground  on  which  we  tread  for 


166  '     GODS    PROVISION     FOR    THE    POOR. 

the  arts  which  adorn,  and  the  learning  which  ennobles,  as 
well  as  for  the  food  which  sustains  human  life.  If  God  had 
thrown  such  barrenness  into  the  earth  that  it  would  yield 
only  enough  to  support  those  who  tilled  it,  you  may  all  per- 
ceive that  every  man  must  have  labored  at  agriculture  for 
himself;  there  being  no  overplus  of  produce  which  the  toil 
of  one  individual  could  have  procured  for  another.  Thus,  if 
you  examine  with  any  carefulness,  you  must  necessarily  dis- 
cover, that  the  sole  reason  why  this  company  of  men  can 
devote  themselves  to  the  business  of  legislation,  and  that  to 
the  study  of  jurisprudence  ;  why  we  may  erect  schools,  and 
universities,  and  so  set  apart  individuals  who  shall  employ 
themselves  on  the  instruction  of  their  fellows ;  why  we  can 
have  armies  to  defend  the  poor  man's  cottage  and  the  rich 
man's  palace,  and  navies  to  prosecute  commerce,  and  preach- 
ers to  stand  up  in  our  cities  and  villages,  pointing  mankind 
to  Jesus  of  Nazareth — that  the  alone  practical  reason  of  all 
this  must  be  sought  in  the  fertility  of  the  soil :  for  if  the  soil 
were  not  fertile  enough  to  yield  more  than  the  tiller  requires 
for  himself,  every  man  must  be  a  husbandman,  and  none 
could  follow  any  other  avocations.  So  that,  by  an  arrange- 
ment which  appears  the  more  wonderful  the  more  it  is  pon- 
dered, God  hath  literally  wrought  into  the  soil  of  this  globe 
a  provision  for  the  varied  wants,  physical,  and  moral,  and 
intellectual,  of  the  race  whose  generations  possess  succes- 
sively its  provinces.  That  which  made  wealth  possible  was 
equally  a  preparation  for  the  well-being  of  poverty.  And 
though  you  may  trace,  with  a  curious  accuracy,  the  rise  and 
progress  of  sciences  ;  and  map  down  the  steps  of  the  march 
of  civilization ;  and  show  how,  in  the  advancings  of  a  na- 
tion, the  talented  and  enterprising  have  carried  on  crusades 
against  ignorance  and  barbarism;  we  can  still  bring  you 
back  to  the  dust  out  of  which  we  were  made,  and  bid  you 
find  in  its  particles  the  elements  of  the  results  on  which  your 
admiration  is  poured,  and  tie  you  down,  with  the  rigor  of  a 
mathematical  demonstration,  to  the  marvellous,  though  half- 
forgotten,  fact,  that  God  invested  the  ground  with  the  power 
of  ministerinor  to  man's  many  necessities — so  that  the  arts  by 


GODS    PROVISION    FOR    THE    POOR.  167 

which  the  comforts  of  a  population  are  multiplied,  and  the 
laws  by  which  their  rights  are  upheld,  and  the  schools  in 
which  their  minds  are  disciplined,  and  the  churches  in  which 
their  souls  are  instructed — all  these  may  be  referred  to  one 
and  the  same  grand  ordinance ;  all  ascribed  to  that  fruit- 
fulness  of  the  earth  by  which  God,  "of  his  goodness,  has 
prepared  for  the  poor." 

But  we  said  that  we  should  dwell  at  no  great  length  on  the 
first  division  of  our  subject;  and  we  now,  therefore,  pass  on 
to  investigate  the  second.  We  are  to  show  how  the  assertion 
holds  good  in  spiritual  things,  that  God,  of  his  goodness,  has 
prepared  for  the  poor. 

Now  we  often  set  before  you  the  noble  doctrine  of  Scrip- 
ture and  onr  church,  that  Christ  died  for  the  whole  world  ; 
and  that,  consequently,  the  human  being  can  never  be  born 
whose  sins  were  not  laid  on  the  surety  of  the  apostate.  It  is 
a  deep  and  mysterious,  but  glorious,  truth,  that  the  sins  of 
every  man  were  punished  in  Jesus,  so  that  the  guiltiness  of 
each  individual  pressed  in  upon  the.  Mediator,  and  wrung 
out  its  penalties  from  his  flesh  and  his  spirit.  The  person  of 
Christ  Jesus  was  divine ;  whilst  in  that  person  were  united 
two  natures,  the  human  and  divine.  And  on  this  account  it 
was  that  the  sins  of  every  man  could  rush  against  the  surety, 
and  take  their  penalty  out  of  his  anguish.  It  is  not  merely 
that  Christ  was  the  brother  of  every  man.  A  man  and  his 
brother  are  walled-off,  and  separated,  by  their  personality. 
What  is  done  by  the  one  cannot  be  felt,  as  his  own  action, 
by  the  other.  But  Christ,  by  assuming  our  nature,  took,  as  it 
were,  a  part  of  every  man.  He  was  not,  as  any  one  of  us  is,  a 
mere  human  individual.  But  having  human  nature,  and  not 
human  personality,  he  was  tied,  so  to  speak,  by  a  most  sensi- 
tive fibre,  to  each  member  of  the  enormous  family  of  man. 
And  along  these  unnumbered  threads  of  sympathy  there 
came  traveling  the  evil  deeds,  and  the  evil  thoughts,  and  the 
evil  words,  of  every  child  of  a  rebellious  seed ;  and  they 
knocked  at  his  heart,  and  asked  for  vengeance  :  and  thus  the 
sin  became  his  own  in  every  thing  but  its  guiltiness  ;  and  the 
wondrous  result  was  brought  round,  that  he  "  who  did  no 


168  rod's  provision   for  the   poor. 

sin,  neither  was  guile  found  in  his  mouth,"*  felt  every  sin 
which  can  ever  be  committed,  and  was  pierced  by  it,  and 
torn  by  it :  and  the  alone  innocent  one — the  solitary  unde- 
nted and  nnprofaned  man — he  was  so  bound  up  with  each 
rebel  against  God  that  the  rebellion,  in  all  its  ramifications, 
seemed  to  throw  itself  into  his  heart;  and,  convulsing  where 
it  could  not  contaminate,  dislocated  the  soul  which  it  did  not 
defile,  and  caused  the  thorough  endurance  of  all  the  wretch- 
edness, and  all  the  anguish,  which  were  due  to  the  trans- 
gressions of  a  mighty  population.  Aye,  and  it  is  because  I 
can  clearly  perceive,  that,  in  taking  human  nature,  Christ 
fastened  me  to  himself  by  one  of  those  sympathetic  threads 
which  can  never  be  snapped,  that  I  feel  certified  that  every 
sin  which  I  have  committed,  and  every  sin  which  I  shall  yet 
commit,  went  in  upon  the  Mediator  and  swelled  his  suffer- 
ings. When  he  died,  my  sins,  indeed,  had  not  been  perpe- 
trated. Yet,  forasmuch  as  they  were  to  be  perpetrated  in  the 
nature  which  lie  had  taken  to  himself,  they  came  crowding 
up  from  the  unborn  ages ;  and  they  ran,  like  molten  lead, 
along  the  fibre  which,  even  then,  bound  me  to  the  Savior : 
and  pouring  themselves  into  the  sanctuary  of  his  righteous 
soul,  contributed  to  the  wringing  from  him  the  mysterious 
cry,  "  mine  iniquities" — mine,  done  in  that  nature,  which  is 
emphatically  mine — "  mine  iniquities  have  taken  hold  upon 
me  so  that  I  am  not  able  to  look  up  ;  they  are  more  than  the 
hairs  of  my  head ;  therefore  my  heart  faileth  me."t 

Now  it  was  thus  with  a  distinct  and  specific  reference  to 
every  individual,  the  poorest  and  the  meanest  of  our  race, 
that  "  the  word  was  made  flesh,"+  and  dwelt  and  died  upon 
this  earth.  It  was  not  merely  that  God  cared  for  the  world  in 
the  mass,  as  for  a  province  of  his  empire  tenanted  by  the 
wayward  and  the  wretched.  He  cared  for  each  single  de- 
scendant of  Adam.  We  know,  with  an  assurance  which  it  is 
beyond  the  power  of  argument  to  shake,  that  Christ  Jesus 
tasted  death  for  every  man.  We  are  commissioned  to  say  to 
each  individual — it  matters  not  who  he  be,  scorched  by  an 
en  stern  sun,  or  girt  in  by  polar  snows — the  Son  of  the  Eter- 

*  1  Peter,  0  :  '2-2.— f  Psalm  40 :  12.—$  John,  1  :  14. 


GOD  S     PROVISION     FOR     THE     POOR.  169 

nal  died  for  thee,  for  thee  separately,  for  thee  individually. 
And  if,  then,  you  cannot  find  us  the  outcast  unredeemed  by 
the  costly  processes  of  the  incarnation  and  crucifixion ;  if, 
addressing  ourselves  to  the  least  known,  and  the  most  insig- 
nificant, of  our  species,  we  can  tell  him  that,  though  he  be 
but  an  unit,  yea  almost  a  cipher  in  the  vast  sum  of  human 
existence,  he  has  so  engaged  the  solicitudes  of  the  Almighty 
that  a  divine  person  undertook  his  suretyship,  and  threw 
down  the  barriers  which  sin  had  cast  up  between  him  and 
happiness — oh,  have  we  not  an  overpowering  proof,  that  God 
has  been  mindful  of  the  despised  ones  and  the  destitute  ;  and 
whilst  we  can  appeal  to  such  provision  on  behalf  of  the  poor 
as  places  heaven  within  their  reach,  in  all  its  magnificence, 
and  in  all  its  blessedness,  where  is  the  tongue  that  can  pre- 
sume to  deny  that  God  hath,  "  of  his  goodness,  prepared  for 
the  poor  ?" 

But  we  cannot  content  ourselves  with  this  general  proof. 
It  seems  implied  in  our  text — and  this  is  the  point  which  we 
seek  to  establish — that,  in  spiritual  things,  God  has  prepared 
for  the  poor  even  more  than  for  the  rich.  We  proceed,  then, 
to  observe  that  God  has  so  manifested  a  tender  and  impartial 
concern  for  his  creatures,  as  to  have  thrown  advantages 
round  poverty  which  may  well  be  said  to  counterbalance  its 
disadvantages.  It  is  unquestionable  that  the  condition  of  a 
poor  man  is  more  favorable  than  that  of  a  rich  to  the  recep- 
tion of  Christ.  Had  not  this  been  matter-of-fact,  the  Redeemer 
would  never  have  pronounced  it  "  easier  for  a  camel  to  go 
through  a  needle's  eye,  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven."*  There  is  in  poverty  what  we  may  al- 
most call  a  natural  tendency  to  the  leading  men  to  depend- 
ence on  God,  and  faith  in  his  promises.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  is  in  wealth  just  as  natural  a  tendency  to  the  produc- 
tion of  a  spirit  of  haughty  and  infidel  independence.  The 
poor  man,  harassed  with  difficulties  in  earning  a  scanty  sub- 
sistence for  himself  and  his  household,  will  have  a  readier 
ear  for  tidings  of  a  bright  home  beyond  the  grave,  than  the 

*  Luke,  18  :  25. 
22 


170  GODS     PROVISION     FOR    THE     POOR. 

rich  man,  who,  lapped  in  luxury,  can  imagine  nothing  more 
delightful  than  the  unbroken  continuance  of  present  enjoy- 
ments. Poverty,  in  short,  is  a  humiliating  and  depressing 
thing;  whilst  affluence  nurtures  pride  and  elation  of  mind. 
And  in  proportion,  therefore,  as  all  which  has  kinsmanship 
with  humility  is  favorable  to  piety,  all  which  has  kinsman- 
ship  with  haughtiness  unfavorable,  we  may  fairly  argue  that 
the  poor  man  has  an  advantage  over  the  rich,  considering 
them  both  as  appointed  to  immortality. 

But  not  only  has  God  thus  mercifully  introduced  a  kind 
of  natural  counterpoise  to  the  allowed  evils  of  poverty:  in 
the  institution  of  a  method  of  redemption,  he  may  specially 
be  said  to  have  prepared  for  the  mean  and  the  destitute. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  prescribed  duties  of  religion,  which, 
in  the  least  degree,  requires  that  a  man  should  be  a  man  of 
learning  or  leisure.  We  take  the  husbandman  at  his  plough, 
or  the  lnanuJacturer  at  his  loom:  and  we  can  tell  him,  that, 
whilst  he  goes  on,  uninterruptedly,  with  his  daily  toil,  the 
grand  business  of  his  soufs  salvation  may  advance  with  an 
uniform  march.  We  do  not  require  that  he  should  relax  in 
his  industry,  or  abstract  some  hours  from  usual  occupations, 
in  order  to  learn  a  complicated  plan,  and  study  a  scheme 
which  demands  time  and  intellect  for  its  mastery.  The  Gos- 
pel message  is  so  exquisitely  simple,  the  sum  and  substance 
of  truth  may  be  so  gathered  into  brief  and  easily  understood 
sentences,  that  all  which  it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  know 
may  be  told  in  a  minute,  and  borne  about  with  him  by  the 
laborer  in  the  held,  or  the  mariner  on  the  waters,  or  the  sol- 
dier on  the  battle-plain.  We  reckon  it  far  the  most  wonder- 
ful feature  in  the  Bible,  that,  whilst  presenting  a  sphere  for 
the  longest  and  most  pains-taking  research — exhibiting 
heights  which  no  soarings  of  imagination  can  scale,  and 
depths  which  no  fathoming-line  of  intellect  can  explore — it 
sets  forth  the  way  of  salvation  with  so  much  of  unadorned 
plainness,  that  it  may  as  readily  be  understood  by  the  child 
or  the  peasant,  as  by  the  full-grown  man  or  the  deep-read 
philosopher.  Who  will  keep  back  the  tribute  of  acknowledg- 
ment that  God.  of  his  goodness,  has  prepared  for  the  poor  : 


C.nri'S    PROVISION    FOR    TIIK     I'OOR.  17  1 

[f  an  individual  be  possessed  of  commanding-  genius,  gifted 
with  powers  which  far  remove  him  from  the  herd  of  his  fel- 
lows, he  will  find  in  the  pages  of  Scripture  beauties,  and  dif- 
ficulties, and  secrets,  and  wonders,  which  a  Ions;  life-time  of 
study  shall  leave  unexhausted.  But  the  man  of  no  preten- 
sions to  talent,  and  of  no  opportunities  for  research,  may  turn 
to  the  Bible  in  quest  of  comfort  and  direction ;  and  there  he 
will  find  traced  as  with  a  sun-beam,  so  that  none  but  the 
wilfully  blind  can  overlook  the  record,  guidance  for  the  lost, 
and  consolation  for  the  downcast.  We  say  that  it  is  in  this 
preparation  for  the  poor  that  the  word  of  God  is  most  sur- 
prising. View  the  matter  how  you  will,  the  Bible  is  as  much 
the  unlearned  man's  book  as  it  is  the  learned,  as  much  the 
poor  man's  as  it  is  the  rich.  It  is  so  composed  as  to  suit  all 
ages  and  all  classes.  And  whilst  the  man  of  learning  and 
capacity  is  poring  upon  the  volume  in  the  retirement  of  his 
closet,  and  employing  all  the  stores  of  a  varied  literature  on 
the  illustrating  its  obscurities  and  the  solving  its  difficulties, 
the  laborer  may  be  sitting  at  his  cottage-door,  with  his  boys 
and  his  girls  drawn  round  him,  explaining  to  them,  from 
the  simply- written  pages,  how  great  is  the  Almighty,  and 
how  precious  is  Jesus.  Nay,  we  shall  not  overstep  the  boun- 
daries of  truth  if  we  carry  these  statements  yet  a  little  fur- 
ther. We  hold  that  the  Bible  is  even  more  the  poor  man's 
book  than  the  rich  man's.  There  is  a  vast  deal  of  the  Bible 
which  appears  written  with  the  express  design  of  verifying 
our  text,  that  God,  of  his  goodness,  has  "  prepared  for  the 
poor."  There  are  many  of  the  promises  which  seem  to  de- 
mand poverty  as  the  element  wherein  alone  their  full  lustre 
can  radiate.  The  prejudices,  moreover,  of  the  poor  man 
against  the  truths  which  the  volume  opens  up  are  likely  to 
be  less  strong,  and  inveterate,  than  those  of  the  rich  man. 
He  seems  to  have,  naturally,  a  kind  of  companionship  with 
a  suffering  Redeemer,  who  had  not  "  where  to  lay  his  head."* 
He  can  have  no  repugnance,  but,  on  the  contrary,  a  sort  of 
instinctive  attachment,  to  apostles  who.  like  himself,  wrought 

*  Lake,  8  :  58. 


172  god's   provision   for  the  poor. 

with  their  own  hands  for  the  supply  of  daily  necessities.  He 
can  feel  himself,  if  we  may  use  such  expression,  at  home  in 
the  scenery,  and  amongst  the  leading  characters,  of  the  New 
Testament.  Whereas,  on  the  other  hand,  the  scientific  man, 
and  the  man  of  education,  and  of  influence,  and  of  high 
bearing  in  society,  will  have  prepossessions,  and  habits  of 
thinking,  with  which  the  announcements  of  the  Gospel  will 
unavoidably  jar.  He  has,  as  it  were,  to  be  brought  down  to 
the  level  of  the  poor  man  before  he  can  pass  under  the  gate- 
way which  stands  at  the  outset  of  the  path  of  salvation.  He 
has  to  begin  by  learning  the  comparative  worthlessness  of 
many  distinctions,  which,  never  having  been  placed  within 
the  poor  man's  reach,  stand  not  as  obstacles  to  his  heaven- 
ward progress.  And  if  there  be  correctness  in  this  represen- 
tation, it  is  quite  evident  that  if  the  Gospel  be,  for  the  first  time, 
put  into  the  hands,  or  proclaimed  in  the  hearing,  of  a  man 
of  rank  and  of  a  mean  man,  the  likelihood  is  far  greater  that 
the  mean  man  will  lay  hold,  effectively  and  savingly,  on  the 
truth,  than  that  the  man  of  rank  will  thus  grasp  it :  and  our 
conclusion,  therefore,  comes  out  strong  and  irresistible,  that, 
if  there  be  advantage  on  either  side,  the  Bible  is  even  more 
nicely  adapted  to  the  poor  than  to  the  rich  ;  and  that,  conse- 
quently, it  is  most  emphatically  true,  that,  "  thou,  O  God, 
hast  prepared  of  thy  goodness  for  the  poor." 

But  there  is  yet  another  point  on  which  we  think  it  well 
to  turn  briefly  your  attention  ;  for  it  is  one  which  is,  often- 
times, not  a  little  misunderstood.  We  know  that  what  are 
termed  the  evidences  of  Christianity  are  of  a  costly  and  intri- 
cate description,  scarcely  accessible  except  to  the  studious. 
It  is  hardly  to  be  supposed  that  the  unlettered  man  can  have 
mastered  the  external  arguments  which  go  to  prove  the  di- 
vine origin  of  our  faith.  And  if  the  Almighty  have  placed 
the  witness  for  the  truth  of  Christianity  beyond  the  poor 
man's  grasp,  has  he  not  left  the  poor  man  open  to  the  inroads 
of  scepticism ;  and  how,  therefore,  can  it  be  said  that  he  has 
of  his  goodness  "  prepared  for  the  poor  ?"  There  is  much  in 
the  aspect  of  the  times  which  gives  powerful  interest  to  such 
a  question  as  this.  Whilst  all  ranks  are  assailed  bv  the  emis- 


GOD  S    PROVISION    FOR    THE    POOR.  173 

saries  of  infidelity,  it  is  important  that  we  see  whether  God 
has  not  prepared  for  all  ranks  some  engines  of  resistance. 

Now  we  are  never  afraid  of  subjecting  the  external  evi- 
dences of  Christianity  to  the  most  sifting  processes  which  our 
adversaries  can  invent.  We  do  not  receive  a  religion  with- 
out proof;  and  our  proof  we  will  bring  to  the  best  touch- 
stones of  truth.  Christianity  is  not  the  grave,  but  the  field,  of 
vigorous  inquiry.  And  we  see  not,  therefore,  why  scepticism 
should  claim  to  itself  a  monopoly  of  intellect.  The  high-road 
to  reputation  for  talent  seems  to  be  boldness  in  denying  Chris- 
tianity. Aye,  and  many  a  young  man  passes  now-a-days  for 
a  fine  and  original  genius,  who  could  not  distinguish  him- 
self in  the  honorable  competitions  of  an  university,  who 
makes  no  way  in  his  profession,  and  is  nothing  better  than  a 
cypher  in  society ;  but  who  is  of  so  independent  a  spirit  that 
he  can  jeer  at  priestcraft  in  a  club-room,  and  of  so  inventive 
a  turn  that  he  can  ply  Scripture  with  objections  a  hundred 
times  refuted. 

But  the  evidences  of  Christianity  are  not  to  be  set  aside 
by  a  sneer.  We  will  take  our  stand  as  on  a  mount  thrown 
up  in  the  broad  waste  of  many  generations  ;  and  one  century 
after  another  shall  struggle  forth  from  the  sepulchres  of  the 
past;  and  each,  as  its  monarchs,  and  its  warriors,  and  its 
priests,  walk  dimly  under  review,  shall  lay  down  a  tribute 
at  the  feet  of  Christianity.  We  will  have  the  volume  of  his- 
tory spread  out  before  us,  and  bid  science  arrange  her  mani- 
fold developments,  and  seek  the  bones  of  martyrs  in  the  east 
and  in  the  west,  and  tread  upon  battle-plains  with  an  em- 
pire's dust  sepulchred  beneath  ;  but  on  whatsoever  we  gaze, 
and  whithersoever  we  turn,  the  evidences  of  our  religion 
shall  look  nobler,  and  wax  mightier.  It  were  the  work  of  a 
life-time  to  gain  even  cursory  acquaintance  with  the  proofs 
which  substantiate  the  claims  of  Christianity.  It  would  beat 
down  the  energies  of  the  most  gifted  and  masterful  spirit,  to 
require  it  to  search  out,  and  concentrate,  whatsoever  attests 
the  truth  of  the  Gospel — for  the  mountains  of  the  earth  have 
a  voice,  and  the  cities,  and  the  vallies,  and  the  tombs ;  and 
the  sail  must  be  unfurled  to  bear  the  inquirer  over  every 


174  god's  provision  for  the  poor. 

ocean,  and  the  wings  of  the  morning  must  carry  him  to  the 
outskirts  of  infinite  space.  We  will  not  concede  that  a  more 
overwhelming  demonstration  would  be  given  to  the  man 
who  should  stand  side  by  side  with  a  messenger  from  the  ( 
invisible  world,  and  hear  from  celestial  lips  the  spirit-stirring 
news  of  redemption,  and  be  assured  of  the  reality  of  the  in- 
terview by  a  fiery  cross  left  stamped  on  his  forehead,  than  is 
actually  to  bo  attained  by  him  who  sits  down  patiently  and 
assiduously,  and  plies,  with  all  the  diligence  of  an  unwea- 
ried laborer  in  the  mine  of  information,  at  accumulating  and 
arranging  the  evidences  of  Christianity.  So  that  we  may 
well  think  ourselves  warranted  in  contending  that  God  has 
marvellously  prepared  for  the  faith  of  educated  men.  Scep- 
ticism, whatever  its  boasts,  walks  to  its  conclusions  over  a 
fettered  reason,  and  a  forgotten  creation.  And  any  man  who 
will  study  carefully,  and  think  candidly,  shall  rise  from  his 
inquiry  a  believer  in  revelation. 

But  what  say  we  to  the  case  of  the  poor  man?  How  hath 
God,  of  his  goodness,  "  prepared  for  the  poor  ?"  It  may  be 
certain  that  the  external  evidences  of  Christianity  amounl  t<> 
a  demonstration,  which,  when  fairly  put,  is  altogether  irre- 
sistible. But  it  is  just  as  certain  that  the  generality  of  be- 
lievers can  have  little  or  no  acquaintance  with  these  eviden- 
ces. It  were  virtually  the  laying  an  interdict  on  the  Christi- 
anity of  the  lower  orders,  to  establish  a  necessity,  that  mas- 
tery of  the  evidences  must  precede  belief  in  the  doctrines  of 
the  Gospel.  We  can  see  no  result  but  that  of  limiting  the  very 
existence  of  religion  to  the  academy  or  the  cloister,  and  pro- 
hibiting its  circulation  through  the  dense  masses  of  our  po- 
pulation, if  the  only  method  of  certifying  one's-self  that  the 
Bible  is  from  God  were  that  of  searching  through  the  annals 
of  antiquity,  and  following  out  the  testimony  arranged  by 
the  labors  of  successive  generations.  And  yet,  on  the  other 
Viand,  it  were  just  as  fatal  to  the  Christianity  of  our  peasantry, 
to  maintain  that  they  take  for  granted  the  divine  origin  of 
the  Gospel,  and  that  they  can  give  no  better  reason  than  that 
of  long-established  custom,  why  the  Bible  should  be  receiv- 
ed as  a  communication  from  heaven.  Wesavthat  this  would 


GODS  PROVISION  FOR  THE  POOR.  175 

he  as  fatal  as  the  former  supposition  to  the  Christianity  of  our 
peasantry.  A  belief  which  has  nothing  to  rest  on,  deserves 
not  to  be  designated  belief;  and,  unable  to  sustain  itself  by 
reason,  must  yield  at  the  first  onset  of  scepticism. 

But  there  can  be  nothing  more  unjust  than  the  conclu- 
sion, that  the  poor  man  has  no  evidence  within  reach,  be- 
cause he  has  not  the  external.  We  will  not  allow  that  God 
has  failed,  in  this  respect,  to  prepare  for  the  poor.  We  will 
go  into  the  cottage  of  the  poor  disciple  of  Christ,  and  we 
will  say  to  him,  why  do  you  believe  upon  Jesus?  You  know 
little  or  nothing  about  the  witness  of  antiquity.  You  know 
little  or  nothing  about  the  completion  of  prophecy.  You  can 
y-ive  me  no  logical,  no  grammatical,  no  historical  reasons 
for  concluding  the  Bible  to  be,  what  it  professes  itself,  a  reve- 
lation, made  in  early  times,  of  the  will  of  the  Almighty. 
Why  then  do  you  believe  upon  Jesus?  What  grounds  have 
you  for  faith,  what  basis  of  conviction? 

Now  if  the  poor  man  lay  bare  his  experience,  he  will. 
probably,  show  how  God  hath  prepared  for  him,  by  giving 
such  a  reply  as  the  following  :  I  lived  long  unconcerned 
about  the  soul.  I  thought  only  on  the  pleasures  of  to-day :  I 
cared  nothing  for  the  worm  which  might  gnaw  me  to-mor- 
row. I  was  brought,  however,  by  sickness,  or  by  disappoint- 
ment, or  by  the  death  of  the  one  I  best  loved,  or  by  a  startling 
sermon,  to  fear  that  all  was  not  right  between  me  and  God. 
1  grew  more  and  more  anxious.  Terrors  haunted  me  by 
day,  and  sleep  went  from  my  pillow  by  night.  At  length  J 
was  bidden  to  looi*  unto  Jesus  as  1:  delivered  for  my  offen- 
ces, and  raised  again  for  ray  justification."*  Instantly  I  felt 
him  to  be  exactly  the  Savior  that  I  needed.  Every  want 
found  in  him  an  immediate  supply;  every  fear  a  cordial  ; 
every  wound  a  balm.  And  ever  since,  the  more  I  have  read 
of  the  Bible,  the  more  have  I  found  that  it  must  have  been 
written  on  purpose  for  myself.  It  seems  to  know  all  my 
car-,-,  all  my  temptations;  and  it  speaks  so  beautifully  a 
word  in  season,  that  he  who  wrote  it  must.  I  think,  have  had 
me  in  his  eye.     Why  do  I  believe  on  Jesus  .'    Oh,  I  feel  him 

*   Roman--,    1     2  i 


176  GOD  S    PROVISION     FOR    THE    POOR. 

to  be  a  divine  Savior— that  is  my  proof.  Why  do  1  believe 
the  Bible  ?  I  have  found  it  to  be  God's  word — there  is  my 
witness. 

We  think,  assuredly,  that  if  you  take  the  experience  of  the 
generality  of  christians,  you  will  find  that  they  do  not  be- 
lieve without  proof.  We  again  say  that  we  cannot  assent  to 
the  proposition,  that  the  Christianity  of  our  villages  and  ham- 
lets takes  for  granted  the  truth  of  the  Bible,  and  has  no  rea- 
son to  give  when  that  truth  is  called  in  question.  The  pea- 
sant who,  when  the  hard  toil  of  the  day  is  concluded,  will 
sit  by  his  fireside,  and  read  the  Bible  with  all  the  eagerness, 
and  all  the  confidence,  of  one  who  receives  it  as  a  message 
from  God,  has  some  better  ground  than  common  report,  or 
the  tradition  of  his  forefathers,  on  which  to  rest  his  persua- 
sion of  the  divinity  of  the  volume.  The  book  speaks  to  him 
with  a  force  which  he  feels  never  could  belong  to  a  mere 
human  composition.  There  is  drawn  such  a  picture  of  his 
own  heart— -a  picture  presenting  many  features  which  he 
would  not  have  discovered,  had  they  not  been  thus  outlined, 
but  which  he  recognizes  as  most  accurate,  the  instant  they 
are  exhibited— that  he  can  be  sure  that  the  painter  is  none 
other  but  he  who  alone  searches  the  heart.  The  proposed 
deliverance  agrees  so  wonderfully,  and  so  minutely,  with  his 
wants ;  it  manifests  such  unbounded  and  equal  concern  for 
the  honor  of  God,  and  the  well-being  of  man  ;  it  provides, 
with  so  consummate  a  skill,  that,  whilst  the  human  race  is 
redeemed,  the  divine  attributes  shall  be  glorified  ;  that  it  were 
like  telling  him  that  a  creature  spread  out  the  firmament, 
and  inlaid  it  with  worlds,  to  tell  him  that  the  proffered  sal- 
vation is  the  device  of  impostors,  or  the  figment  of  enthu- 
siasts. And  thus  the  pious  inmate  of  the  workshop  or  the 
cottage  ':  hath  the  witness  in  himself."*  The  home-thrusts 
which  he  receives  from  "the  sword  of  the  Spirit  "t  are  his 
evidences  that  the  weapon  is  not  of  earthly  manufacture. 
The  surprising  manner  in  which  texts  will  start,  as  it  were, 
from  the  page,  and  become  spoken  things  rather  than  writ- 

»  1  St.  John,  b  :  10.—+  Ephesians,  G  :  17. 


GOD  3    PKOV1SION    FOR    the    poor. 


177 


ten  ;  so  that  the  Bible,  shaking  itself  from  the  trammels  of 
the  printing-press,  seems  to  rush  from  the  firmament  in  the 
breathings  of  the  Omnipotent — this  stamps  Scripture  to  him 
as  literally  God's  word — prophets  and  apostles  may  have 
written  it,  but  the  Almighty  still  utters  it.  And  all  this  makes 
the  evidence  with  which  the  poor  man  is  prepared  in  de- 
fence of  Christianity.  We  do  not  represent  it  as  an  evidence 
which  may  successfully  be  brought  forward  in  professed 
combat  with  infidelity.  It  must  have  been  experienced  be- 
fore it  can  be  admitted  ;  and  not  being  of  a  nature  to  com- 
mend itself  distinctly  to  the  understanding  of  the  sceptic,  will 
be  rejected  by  him  as  visionary,  and  therefore,  received  not 
in  proof.  But,  if  the  self-evidencing  power  of  Scripture  ren- 
der not  the  peasant  a  match  for  the  unbeliever,  it  nobly  se- 
cures him  against  being  himself  overborne.  "  The  witness 
in  himself,"  if  it  qualify  him  not,  like  science  and  scholar- 
ship, for  the  offensive,  will  render  him  quite  impregnable,  so 
long  as  he  stands  on  the  defensive.  And  we  believe  of  many 
a  village  christian,  who  has  never  read  a  line  on  the  evi- 
dences of  Christianity,  and  whose  whole  theology  is  drawn 
from  the  Bible  itself,  that  he  would  be,  to  the  full,  as  staunch 
in  withstanding  the  emissaries  of  scepticism  as  the  mightiest 
and  best  equipped  of  our  learned  divines ;  and  that,  if  he 
could  give  no  answer  to  his  assailant  whilst  urging  his  chro- 
nological and  historical  objections,  yet  by  falling  back  on 
his  own  experience,  and  entrenching  himself  within  the 
manifestations  of  truth  which  have  been  made  to  his  own 
conscience,  he  would  escape  the  giving  harborage,  for  one 
instant,  to  a  suspicion  that  Christianity  is  a  fable ;  and  holds 
fast,  in  all  its  beauty,  and  in  all  its  integrity,  the  truth,  that 
"  we  have  an  advocate  with  the  Father,  Christ  Jesus  the 
righteous,  and  he  is  the  propitiation  for  our  sins."* 

Yea,  and  it  is  a  growing  and  strengthening  evidence  which 
God,  of  his  goodness,  has  thus  prepared  for  our  poor.  When- 
soever they  obey  a  direction  of  Scripture,  and  find  the  ac- 
companying promise  fulfilled,  this  is  a  new  proof  that  the 
direction  and  the  promise  are  from  God.    The  book  tells 

«  1  St.  John,  2  :  1. 
23 


J  TS  cod's  provision  fob  the   poor, 

them  that  blessings  are  to  be  sought  and  obtained  through 
the  name  of  Christ.  They  ask  and  they  receive.  What  is 
this  but  a  witness  that  the  book  is  divine?  Would  God  give 
his  sanction  to  a  lie  ?  The  book  assures  them  that  the  Holy 
►Spirit  will  gradually  sanctify  those  who  believe  upon  Jesus. 
They  find  the  sanctification  following  on  the  belief;  and 
does  not  this  attest  the  authority  of  the  volume?  The  book 
declares  that  "  all  things  work  together  for  good  "*  to  the 
disciples  of  Jesus.  They  find  that  prosperity  and  adversity, 
as  each  brings  its  trials,  so  each  its  lessons  and  supports  ;  and 
whilst  God  thus  continually  verifies  a  declaration,  can  they 
doubt  that  he  made  it?  And  thus,  day  by  day,  the  self-evi- 
dencing power  of  Scripture  comes  into  fuller  operation,  and 
experience  multiplies  and  strengthens  the  internal  testimo- 
ny. The  peasant  will  discover  more  and  more  that  the  Bible 
and  the  conscience  so  fit  into  each  other,  that  the  artificer 
who  made  one  must  have  equally  fashioned  both.  His  life 
will  be  an  on-going  proof  that  Scripture  is  truth  ;  for  his  days 
and  hours  are  its  chapters  and  verses  realized  to  the  letter. 
And  others  may  admire  the  shield  which  the  industry  and 
ingenuity  of  learned  men  have  thrown  over  Christianity. 
They  may  speak  of  the  solid  rampart  cast  up  by  the  labor  of 
ages ;  and  pronounce  the  faith  unassailable,  because  history, 
and  philosophy,  and  science,  have  all  combined  to  gird  round 
it  the  iron,  and  the  rock,  of  a  ponderous  and  colossal  demon- 
stration. We,  for  our  part,  glory  most  in  the  fact,  that  Scrip- 
ture so  commends  itself  to  the  conscience,  and  experience  so 
bears  out  the  Bible,  that  the  Gospel  can  go  the  round  of  the 
world,  and  carry  with  it,  in  all  its  travel,  its  own  mighty 
credentials.  And  though  we  depreciate  not,  but  rather  con- 
fess thankfully,  the  worth  of  external  evidence,  we  still  think 
it  the  noblest  provision  of  God,  that  if  the  external  were  de- 
stroyed, the  internal  would  remain,  and  uphold  splendidly 
Christianity.  There  is  nothing  which  we  reckon  more  won- 
derful in  arrangement,  nothing  more  deserving  all  the 
warmth  of  our  gratitude,  than  that  divine  truth,  by  its  in- 
nate power,  could  compel  the  Corinthian  sceptict  to  fall 

*  Romans,  8  :  28. — t  1  Corinthians,  14  :  25. 


GOD's     PROVISION     FOR    THE     rOOIi.  179 

down  upon  his  face:  and  that  this  truth,  by  the  same  innate 
power,  can  so  satisfy  a  reader  of  its  origin,  that  ploughmen, 
as  well  as  theologians,  have  reason  for  their  hope  ;  and  the 
Christianity  of  villages,  as  much  as  the  Christianity  of  uni- 
versities, can  defy  infidelity,  and  hold  on  undaunted  by  all 
the  buffetings  of  the  adversary. 

And  if  we  now  sum  up  this  portion  of  our  argument,  we 
may  say,  that  God  has  so  constructed  his  word  that  it  carries 
with  it  its  own  witness  to  the  poor  man's  intellect,  and  the 
poor  man's  heart.  Thus,  although  it  were  idle  to  contend 
that  the  poor  can  show  you,  with  a  learned  precision,  the 
authenticity  of  Scripture,  or  call  in  the  aids  which  philoso- 
phy has  furnished,  or  strengthen  their  faith  from  the  won- 
derworkings  of  nature,  or  mount  and  snatch  conviction  from 
the  glittering  tracery  on  the  overhead  canopy  ;  still  they  may 
feel,  whilst  perusing  the  Bible,  that  it  so  speaks  to  the  heart, 
that  it  tells  them  so  fully  all  they  most  want  to  know,  that  it 
so  verifies  itself  in  every-day  experience,  that  it  humbles 
them  so  much  and  rejoices  them  so  much,  that  it  strikes 
with  such  energy  on  every  chord — in  short,  that  it  so  com- 
mends itself  to  every  faculty  as  purely  divine — that  they 
could  sooner  believe  that  God  made  not  the  stars,  than  that 
God  wrote  not  the  Scriptures :  and  thus,  equipped  with 
powerful  machinery  for  resisting  the  infidel,  they  give  proof 
the  most  conclusive,  that  "  thou,  O  God,  hast  prepared,  of 
thy  goodness,  for  the  poor." 

Such  are  the  illustrations  which  we  would  advance  of  the 
truth  of  our  text,  when  reference  is  had  to  spiritual  pro- 
vision. We  shall  only,  in  conclusion,  commend  the  subject 
to  your  earnest  meditation  ;  assuring  you  that  the  more  it  is 
examined,  the  more  will  it  be  found  fraught  with  interest 
and  instruction.  There  is  something  exquisitely  touching  in 
an  exhibition  of  God  as  providing  sedulously,  both  in  tem- 
poral and  spiritual  things,  for  the  poor  and  illiterate.  "  The 
eyes  of  all  wait  upon  thee,  and  thou  givest  them  their  meat 
in  due  season."*  God  is  that  marvellous  being  to  whom  the 
only  great  thing  is  Himself.    A  world  is  to  Him  an  atom, 

*  Psalm  145  •  15. 


180  GOD'S    PROVISION    FOR    THE    I'OOR. 

and  an  atom  is  to  Him  a  world.  And  as,  therefore,  he  cannot 
be  mastered  by  what  is  vast  and  enormous,  so  he  cannot 
overlook  what  is  minute  and  insignificant.  There  is  not, 
then,  a  smile  on  a  poor  man's  cheek,  and  there  is  not  a  tear 
in  a  poor  man's  eye,  either  of  which  is  independent  on  the 
providence  of  Him  who  gilds,  with  the  lustre  of  his  counte- 
nance, the  unlimited  concave,  and  measures,  in  the  hollow 
of  his  hand,  the  waters  of  fathomless  oceans.  And  that  "the 
poor  have  the  Gospel  preached  to  them,"*  is  one  of  the 
strongest  evidences  on  the  side  of  Christianity.  It  was  given 
to  John  the  Baptist  as  a  mark  by  which  he  might  prove 
Christ  the  promised  Messiah.  He  might  hence  learn  that 
Jesus  had  come,  not  to  make  God  known,  exclusively,  to 
the  learned  and  great;  but  that,  breaking  loose  from  the 
trammels  of  a  figurative  dispensation,  he  was  dealing  with 
the  mechanic  at  his  wheel,  and  with  the  slave  at  his  drud- 
gery, and  with  the  beggar  in  his  destitution.  Had  Christ 
sent  to  the. imprisoned  servant  of  the  Lord,  and  told  him 
that  he  was  fascinating  the  philosopher  with  sublime  disclo- 
sures of  the  nature  of  Deity,  and  drawing  after  him  the 
learned  of  the  earth  by  powerful  and  rhetorical  delineations 
of  the  wonders  of  the  invisible  world;  but  that,  all  the  while, 
he  had  no  communications  for  the  poor  and  commonplace 
crowd ;  why,  John  might  have  been  dazzled,  for  a  time,  by 
the  splendor  of  his  miracles,  and  he  might  have  mused,  won- 
deringly,  on  the  displayed  ascendancy  over  diseases  and 
death ;  but,  quickly,  he  must  have  thought,  this  is  not  re- 
vealing God  to  the  ignorant  and  destitute,  and  this  cannot 
be  the  religion  designed  for  all  nations  and  ranks.  But  when 
the  announcement  of  wonderworkings  was  followed  by  the 
declaration  that  glad  tidings  of  deliverance  were  being  pub- 
lished to  the  poor,  the  Baptist  would  readily  perceive,  that 
the  long  looked-for  close  to  a  limited  dispensation  was  con- 
templated in  the  mission  of  Jesus  ;  that  Jesus,  in  short,  was 
introducing  precisely  the  system  which  Messiah  might  be 
expected  to  introduce ;  and  thus,  finding  that  the  doctrines 

*  Matthew,  11:5. 


god's  provision  for  the  poor.  181 

bore  out  the  miracles,  lie  would  admit  at  once  his  preten- 
sions, not  merely  because  he  gave  sight  to  the  blind,  but 
because,  preaching  the  Gospel  to  the  ignorant,  he  showed 
that  God,  of  his  goodness,  had  prepared  for  the  poor. 

And  that  the  Gospel  should  be  adapted,  as  well  as  preach- 
ed, to  the  poor — adapted  in  credentials  as  well  as  in  doc- 
trines— this  is  one  of  those  arrangements,  which,  as  devised, 
show  infinite  love,  as  executed,  infinite  wisdom.    Who  will 
deny  that  God  hath  thrown  himself  into  Christianity,  even 
as  into  the  system  of  the  visible  universe,  since  the  meanest 
can  trace  his  footsteps,  and  feel  themselves  environed  with 
the  marchings  of  the  Eternal  One?  Oh,  we  do  think  it  cause 
of  mighty  gratulation,  in  days  when  infidelity,  no  longer  con- 
fining itself  to  literary  circles,  has  gone  down  to  the  homes 
and  the  haunts  of  our  peasantry,  and  seeks  to  prosecute  an 
impious  crusade  amongst  the  very  lowest  of  our  people — we 
do  think  it  cause  of  mighty  gratulation,  that  God  should 
have  thus  garrisoned  the  poor  against  the  inroads  of  scepti- 
cism. We  have  no  fears  for  the  vital  and  substantial  Christi- 
anity of  the  humbler  classes  of  society.    They  may  seem,  at 
first  sight,  unequipped  for  the  combat.  On  a  human  calcula- 
tion, it  might  mount  almost  to  a  certainty,  that  infidel  publi- 
cations, or  infidel  men,  working  their  way  into  the  cottages 
of  the  land,  would  gain  an  easy  victory,  and  bear  down, 
without  difficulty,  the  faith  and  piety  of  the  unprepared  in- 
mates. But  God  has  had  a  care  for  the  poor  of  the  flock.  He 
loves  them  too  well  to  leave  them  defenceless.    And  now — 
appealing  to  that  witness  which  every  one  who  believes  will 
find  in  himself — we  can  feel  that  the  Christianity  of  the  illi- 
terate has  in  it  as  much  of  stamina  as  the  Christianity  of  the 
educated  ;  and  we  can,  therefore,  be  confident  that  the  scep- 
ticism which  shrinks  from  the  batteries  of  the  learned  theo- 
logian, will  gain  no  triumphs  at  the  firesides  of  our  God- 
fearing rustics. 

We  thank  thee,  O  Father  of  heaven  and  earth,  that  thou 
hast  thus  made  the  Gospel  of  thy  Son  its  own  witness,  and 
its  own  rampart.  We  thank  thee  that  thou  didst  so  breathe 
thyself  into  apostles  and  prophets,  that  their  writings  are 


182  god's   provision   for   the   poor. 

thine  utterance,  and  declare  to  all  ages  thine  authorship. 
And  now,  what  have  we  to  ask,  but  that,  if  there  be  one  here 
who  has  hitherto  been  stouthearted  and  unbelieving,  the  de- 
livered word  may  prove  itself  divine,  by  "  piercing  even  to 
the  dividing  asunder  of  soul  and  spirit  ;■"*  and  that,  whilst 
we  announce  that  "  God  is  angry  with  the  wicked  ;"t  that 
those  who  forget  Him  shall  be  turned  into  hell ;  but  that, 
nevertheless,  he  hath  "  so  loved  the  world  as  to  give  his 
only-begotten  Son  "|  for  its  redemption — oh,  we  ask  that  the 
careless  one,  hearing  truths  at  once  so  terrifying,  and  so  en- 
couraging, may  be  humbled  to  the  dust,  and  yet  animated 
with  hope  ;  and  that,  stirred  by  the  divinity  which  embodies 
itself  in  the  message,  he  may  flee,  "  poor  in  spirit,"?  to  Jesus, 
and,  drawing  out  of  his  fullness,  be  enabled  to  testify  to  all 
around,  that  "  thou,  O  God,  hast  of  thy  goodness  prepared 
for  the  poor." 

*  Hebrews,  4  :  12.— t  Psalm  7  :  11.— t  John,  3  :  16.— §  Matthew,  fj :  3. 


SERMON    IX, 


ST.   TAUL    A    TENT-MAKEK. 


"And  because  he  was  of  the  same  craft,  he  abode  with  them  and  wrought, 
for  by  their  occupation  they  were  tent-makers."— Acts,  18  :  3. 

The  argument  which  may  be  drawn,  in  support  of  Chris- 
tianity, from  the  humble  condition  of  its  earliest  teachers,  is 
often,  and  fairly,  insisted  on  in  disputations  with  the  sceptic. 
We  scarcely  know  a  finer  vantage-ground,  on  which  the 
champion  of  truth  can  plant  himself,  than  that  of  the  greater 
credulity  which  must  be  shown  in  the  rejection,  than  in  the 
reception,  of  Christianity.  We  mean  to  assert,  in  spite  of  the 
tauntings  of  those  most  thorough  of  all  bondsmen,  free- 
thinkers, that  the  faith  required  from  deniers  of  revelation  is 
far  larger  than  that  demanded  from  its  advocates.  He 
who  thinks  that  the  setting  up  of  Christianity  may  satisfac- 
torily be  accounted  for  on  the  supposition  of  its  falsehood, 
taxes  credulity  a  vast  deal  more  than  he  who  believes  all  the 
prodigies,  and  all  the  miracles,  recorded  in  Scripture.  The 
most  marvellous  of  all  prodigies,  and  the  most  surpassing  of 
all  miracles,  would  be  the  progress  of  the  christian  religion, 
supposing  it  untrue.  And,  assuredly,  he  who  has  wrought 
himself  into  the  belief  that  such  a  wonder  has  been  exhibited, 
can  have  no  right  to  boast  himself  shrewder,  and  more  cau- 
tions, than  he  who  holds,  that,  at  human  bidding,  the  sun 
stood  still,  or  that  tempests  were  hushed,  and  graves  rifled, 
at  the  command  of  one  "found  in  fashion"  as  ourselves. 
The  fact  that  Christianity  strode  onward  with  a  resistless 
march,  making  triumphant  way  against  the  banded  power. 


184  r/T.    TAUL    A    TENT-MAKER. 

and  learning,  and  prejudices  of  the  world — this  fact,  we  say, 
requires  to  be  accounted  for ;  and  inasmuch  as  there  is  no 
room  for  questioning  its  accuracy,  we  ask,  in  all  justice,  to 
be  furnished  with  its  explanation.  We  turn,  naturally,  from 
the  result  to  the  engines  by  which,  to  all  human  appearance, 
the  result  was  brought  round  ;  from  the  system  preached  to 
the  preachers  themselves.  Were  those  who  first  propounded 
Christianity  men  who,  from  station  in  society,  and  influence 
over  their  fellows,  were  likely  to  succeed  in  palming  false- 
hood on  the  world  ?  Were  they  possessed  of  such  machinery 
of  intelligence,  and  wealth,  and  might,  and  science,  that — 
every  allowance  being  made  for  human  credulity  and  hu- 
man infatuation — there  would  appear  the  very  lowest  proba- 
bility, that,  having  forged  a  lie,  they  could  have  caused  it 
speedily  to  be  venerated  as  truth,  and  carried  along  the 
earth's  diameter  amid  the  worshippings  of  thousands  of  the 
earth's  population  1  We  have  no  intention,  on  the  present 
occasion,  of  pursuing  the  argument.  But  we  are  persuaded 
that  no  candid  mind  can  observe  the  speed  with  which 
Christianity  over-ran  the  civilized  world,  compelling  the  ho- 
mage of  kings,  and  casting  down  the  altars  of  long-cherished 
superstitions ;  and  then  compare  the  means  with  the  effect 
— the  apostles,  men  of  low  birth,  and  poor  education,  backed 
by  no  authority,  and  possessed  of  none  of  those  high- wrought 
endowments  which  mark  out  the  achievers  of  difficult  enter- 
prise— we  are  persuaded,  we  say,  that  no  candid  mind  can 
set  what  was  clone  side  by  side  with  the  apparatus  through 
which  it  was  effected,  and  not  confess,  that,  of  all  incredible 
things,  the  most  incredible  would  be,  that  a  few  fishermen  of 
Galilee  vanquished  the  world,  upheaving  its  idolatries,  and 
mastering  its  prejudices,  and  yet  that  their  only  weapon  was 
a  lie,  their  only  mechanism  jugglery  and  deceit. 

And  this  it  is  which  the  sceptic  believes.  Yea,  on  his  be- 
lief of  this  he  grounds  claims  to  a  sounder,  and  shrewder, 
and  less  fettered  understanding,  than  belongs  to  the  mass  of 
his  fellows.  He  deems  it  the  mark  of  a  weak  and  ill-disci- 
plined intellect  to  admit  the  truth  of  Christ's  raising  the 
dead  ;  but  appeals,  in  proof  of  a  staunch  and  well-informed 


ST.     PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER. 


185 


mmd,  to  his  belief  that  this  whole  planet  was  convulsed  by 
the  blow  of  an  infant.  He  scorns  the  narrow-mindedness  of 
submission  to  what  he  calls  priestcraft ;  but  counts  himself 
large-minded,  because  he  admits  that  a  priestcraft,  only  wor- 
thy his  contempt,  ground  into  powder  every  system  which  he 
thinks  worthy  his  admiration.  He  laughs  at  the  credulity  of 
supposing  that  God  had  to  do  with  the  institution  of  Christi- 
anity ;  and  then  applauds  the  sobriety  of  referring  to  chance 
what  bears  all  the  marks  of  design — proving  himself  rational 
by  holding  that  causes  are  not  necessary  to  effects. 

Thus  we  recur  to  our  position,  that,  if  the  charge  of  cre- 
dulity must  be  fastened  on  either  the  opponents,  or  the  advo- 
cates, of  Christianity,  then,  of  the  two,  the  opponents  lie  vast- 
ly most  open  to  the  accusation.  Men  pretend  to  a  more  than 
ordinary  wisdom  because  they  reject,  as  incredible,  occur- 
rences and  transactions  which  others  account  for  as  super- 
natural. But  where  is  their  much-vaunted  wisdom,  when  it 
can  be  shown,  to  a  demonstration,  that  they  admit  things  a 
thousand-fold  stranger  than  those,  which,  with  all  the  parade 
of  intellectual  superiority,  they  throw  from  them  as  too  mon- 
strous for  credence?  We  give  it  you  as  a  truth,  susceptible 
of  the  rigor  of  mathematical  proof,  that  the  phenomena  of 
Christianity  can  only  be  explained  by  conceding  its  divinity. 
If  Christianity  came  from  God,  there  is  an  agency  adequate 
to  the  result ;  and  you  can  solve  its  making  way  amongst  the 
nations.  But  if  Christianity  came  not  from  God,  no  agency 
can  be  assigned  at  all  commensurate  with  the  result ;  and 
you  cannot  account  for  its  marchings  over  the  face  of  the 
earth.  So  that  when — setting  aside  every  other  considera- 
tion— we  mark  the  palpable  unfitness  of  the  apostles  for  de- 
vising, and  carrying  into  effect,  a  grand  scheme  of  impos- 
ture, we  feel  that  we  do  right  in  retorting  on  the  sceptic  the 
often-urged  charge  of  credulity.  We  tell  him,  that,  if  it  prove 
a  clear-sighted  intellect,  to  believe  that  unsupported  men 
would  league  in  an  enterprise  which  was  nothing  less  than 
•  a  crusade  against  the  world  ;  that  ignorant  men  could  con- 
coct a  system  overpassing,  confessedly,  the  wisdom  of  the 
noblest  of  the  heathen  ;  and  that  this  insignificant  and  un- 
24 


[86  ST.     PAUL    A    TENT-MAKBK. 

equipped  band  would  go  through  fire  and  water,  brave  ths 
lion  and  dare  the  stake,  knowing,  all  the  while,  that  they  bat- 
tled for  a  lie,  and  crowned,  all  the  while,  with  overpowering 
success — aye,  we  tell  the  sceptic,  that,  if  a  belief  such  as  this 
prove  a  clear-sighted  intellect,  he  is  welcome  to  the  laurels 
of  reason  :  and  we.  for  our  part,  shall  contentedly  herd  with 
the  irrational,  who  are  weak  enough  to  think  it  credible  that 
the  apostles  were  messengers  from  God ;  and  only  incredi- 
ble that  mountains  fell  when  there  was  nothing  to  shake 
them,  and  oceans  dried  up  when  there  was  nothing  to  drain 
them,  and  that  there  passed  over  a  creation  an  unmeasured 
revolution,  without  a  cause,  and  without  a  mover,  and  with- 
out a  Deity. 

Now  we  have  advanced  these  hurried  remarks  on  a  well 
known  topic  of  christian  advocacy,  because  our  text  leads 
us,  as  it  were,  into  the  workshop  of  the  first  teachers  of  out 
faith,  and  thus  forces  on  us  the  contemplation  of  their  lowly 
and  destitute  estate.  It  is  not,  however,  our  design  to  pursue 
further  the  argument.  We  may  derive  other,  and  not  less 
important,  lessons  from  the  simple  exhibition  of  Paul,  and 
Aquila,  and  Priscilla,  plyiug  their  occupation  as  tent-makers. 
It  should  just  be  premised,  that,  so  far  as  Paul  himself  is  con 
cerned,  we  must  set  down  his  laboring  for  a  living  as  actual- 
ly a  consequence  on  his  preaching  Christianity.  Before  he 
engaged  in  the  service  of  Christ,  he  had  occupied  a  station 
in  the  upper  walks  of  society:  and  was  not,  we  may  believe, 
dependent  on  his  industry  for  his  bread.  It  was,  however, 
the  custom  of  the  Jews  to  teach  children,  whatever  the  rank 
of  their  parents,  some  kind  of  handicraft ;  so  that,  in  case  of 
a  reverse  of  circumstances,  they  might  have  a  resource  to 
which  to  betake  themselves.  We  conclude  that,  in  accord- 
ance with  this  custom,  St.  Paul,  as  a  boy,  had  learned  the 
art  of  tent-making  ;  though  he  may  not  have  exercised  it  for 
a  subsistence  until  he  had  spent  all  in  the  service  of  Jesus. 
We  appeal  not,  therefore,  to  the  instance  of  this  great  apostle 
to  the  Gentiles  as  confirming,  in  every  respect,  our  foregoing 
argument.  St.  Paul  was  eminent  both  for  learning  and  talent. 
And  it  would  not,  therefore,  be  just  to  reason  from  his  pre 


ST.    1'Al'I.    A    TENT-MAKER.  187 

sinned  incompetency  to  carry  on  a  difficult  scheme,  since,  at 
the  least,  he  was  not  disqualified  for  undertakings  which 
crave  a  master-spirit  at  their  head.  It  is  certain,  however, 
that,  in  these  respects,  St.  Paul  was  an  exception  to  the  rest 
of  the  first  preachers  of  Christianity.  Our  general  reasoning, 
therefore,  remains  quite  unaffected,  whatever  he  urged  in 
regard  to  a  particular  case. 

But  we  have  already  said,  that  the  main  business  of  our 
discourse  is  to  derive  other  lessons  from  our  text  than  that 
which  refers  to  the  evidences  of  Christianity.  We  wave,  there- 
fore, further  inquiry  into  that  proof  of  the  divinity  of  the 
system  which  is  furnished  by  the  poverty  of  the  teachers. 
We  will  sit  down,  as  it  were,  by  St.  Paul  whilst  busied  with 
his  tent-making ;  and,  considering  who  and  what  the  indi- 
vidual is  who  thus  lives  by  his  artisanship,  draw  that  in- 
struction from  the  scene  which  we  may  suppose  it  intended 
to  furnish. 

Now  called  as  St.  Paul  had  been  by  miracle  to  the  apos- 
tleship  of  Christ,  so  that  he  was  suddenly  transformed  from 
a  persecutor  into  a  preacher  of  the  faith,  we  might  well  look 
to  find  in  him  a  pre-eminent  zeal ;  just  as  though  the  un- 
earthly light,  which  flashed  across  his  path,  had  entered  into 
his  heart,  and  lit  up  there  a  fire  inextinguishable  by  the 
deepest  waters  of  trouble.  And  it  is  beyond  all  peradventure, 
that  there  never  moved  upon  our  earth  a  heartier,  more  un- 
wearied, more  energetic,  disciple  of  Jesus.  His  motto  was  to 
"  count  all  things  but  loss  for  the  excellency  of  the  know- 
ledge of  Christ  ;"*  and  crossing  seas,  and  exhausting  conti- 
nents, till  a  vast  portion  of  the  known  world  had  heard  from 
his  lips  the  tidings  of  redemption,  he  proved  the  motto  en- 
graven on  his  soul,  and  showed  that  the  desire  of  bringing 
the  perishing  into  acquaintance  with  a  Savior  was  nothing 
less  than  the  life's-blood  of  his  system.  And  we  are  bound  to 
suppose,  that,  where  there  existed  so  glowing  a  zeal,  prompt- 
ing him  to  be  "  instant  in  season,  out  of  season,"t  the  irk- 
someness  of  mechanical  labor  must  have  been  greater  than 

•  Philippians,  2  :  8.— t  2  Timothy,  4  :  2. 


100  ST.    PAUL    A  TENT-MAKER. 

it  is  easy  to  compute.  Since  the  whole  soul  was  wrapped  up 
in  the  work  of  the  ministry,  it  could  not  have  been  with- 
out a  feeling,  amounting  almost  to  painfulness,  that  the 
apostle  abstracted  himself  from  the  business  of  his  embas- 
sage, and  toiled  at  providing  for  his  own  bodily  necessities. 
We  see,  at  once,  that  so  far  as  any  appointment  of  God  could 
be  grievous  to  a  man  of  St.  Paul's  exemplary  holiness,  this 
appointment  must  have  been  hard  to  endure :  and  we  can- 
not contemplate  the  great  apostle,  withdrawn  from  the  spirit- 
stirring  scenes  of  his  combats  with  idolatry,  and  earning  a 
meal  like  a  common  artificer,  and  not  feel,  that  the  effort  of 
addressing  the  Athenians,  congregated  on  Areopagus,  was 
as  nothing  to  that  of  sitting  down  patiently  to  all  the  drud- 
gery of  the  craftsman. 

But  we  go  on  to  infer  from  these  unquestionable  facts, 
that,  unless  there  had  been  great  ends  which  St.  Paul's  la- 
boring subserved,  God  would  not  have'  permitted  this  sore 
exercise  of  his  servant.  There  is  allotted  to  no  christian  a 
trial  without  a  reason.  And  if  then  we  are  once  certified, 
that  the  working  for  his  bread  was  a  trial  to  St.  Paul,  we 
must  go  forward  and  investigate  the  reasons  of  the  appoint- 
ment. 

Now  we  learn  from  the  epistles  of  St.  Paul,  that  when  he 
refused  to  be  maintained  by  the  churches  which  he  planted, 
it  was  through  fear  that  the  success  of  his  preaching  might 
be  interfered  with  by  suspicions  of  his  disinterestedness.  He 
chose  to  give  the  Gospel  without  cost,  in  order  that  his  ene- 
mies might  have  no  plea  for  representing  him  as  an  hire- 
ling, and  thus  depreciating  his  message.  In  this  respect  he 
appears  to  have  acted  differently  from  the  other  apostles, 
since  we  find  him  thus  expostulating  with  the  Corinthians : 
"  have  we  not  power  to  eat  and  to  drink  ?  or  I  only  and 
Barnabas,  have  not  we  power  to  forbear  working  ?"*  He 
evidently  argues,  that,  had  he  so  pleased,  he  might  justly 
have  done  what  his  fellow-apostles  did,  receive  temporal  be- 
nefits from  those  to  whom  they  were  the  instruments  of  com- 
municating spiritual.    It  was  a  law,  whose  justice  admitted 

♦  1  Corinthians,  9  :  4,  6- 


ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER.  189 

not  of  controversy,  that  "  the  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire."* 
And,  therefore,  however  circumstances  might  arise,  render- 
ing it  advisable  that  the  right  should  be  waved,  St.  Paul  de- 
sired the  Corinthians  to  understand,  that,  had  he  chosen,  he 
might  have  claimed  the  sustenance  for  which  he  was  con- 
tented to  toil.  It  was  a  right,  and  not  a  favor,  which  he  waved. 
And  if  there  were  no  other  lesson  deducible  from  the  manual 
occupation  of  the  apostle,  we  should  do  well  to  ponder  the 
direction  thus  practically  given,  that  we  remove  all  occa- 
sions of  offence.  St.  Paul  gave  up  even  his  rights,  fearing 
lest  their  enforcement  might  possibly  impede  the  progress  of 
the  Gospel.  So  single-eyed  was  this  great  teacher  of  the 
Gentiles,  that  when  the  reception  of  the  message,  and  the 
maintenance  of  the  messenger,  seemed  at  all  likely  to  clash, 
he  would  gladly  devote- the  day  to  the  service  of  others,  and 
then  toil  through  the  night  to  make  provision  for  himself.  If 
ever,  therefore,  it  happen,  either  to  minister  or  to  people,  to 
find  that  the  pushing  a  claim,  or  the  insisting  on  a  right 
would  bring  discredit,  though  unjustly  and  wrongfully,  on 
the  cause  of  religion  ;  let  it  be  remembered  that  our  prime 
business,  as  professors  of  godliness,  is  with  the  glory  of  God 
and  the  advance  of  the  Gospel ;  that  the  avoiding  evil  is  a 
great  thing,  but  that  the  scriptural  requisition  is,  that  we 
avoid  even  the  "appearance  of  evil."t  And  if  there  seem  to 
us  a  hardness  in  this,  so  that  we  count  it  too  much  of  con- 
cession, that  we  fall  back  from  demands  which  strict  justice 
would  warrant,  let  us  betake  ourselves,  for  an  instant,  to  the 
workshop  of  St.  Paul ;  and  there  remembering,  whilst  this 
servant  of  Christ  is  fashioning  the  canvass,  that  he  labors  for 
bread,  which,  by  an  indisputable  title,  is  already  his  own, 
we  may  learn  it  a  christian's  duty  to  allow  himself  to  be 
wronged,  when,  by  staunch  standing  to  his  rights,  Christ's 
cause  may  be  injured. 

But  as  yet  we  are  only  on  the  outskirts  of  our  subject. 
The  grand  field  of  inquiry  still  remains  to  be  traversed.  "We 
have  seen,  that,  in  order  to  foreclose  all  question  of  his  sin- 

♦  1  Timothy,  5:  18.—  +  1  Thessalonians,  5 :  22, 


190  ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER. 

cerity  and  disinterestedness,  St.  Paul  chose  to  ply  at  his  tent- 
making  rather  than  derive  a  maintenance  from  his  preach- 
ing. We  next  observe,  that,  had  not  his  poverty  been  on 
other  accounts  advantageous,  we  can  scarcely  think  that  this 
single  reason  would  have  procured  its  permission.  He  might 
have  refused  to  draw  an  income  from  his  converts,  and  yet 
not  have  been  necessitated  to  betake  himself  to  handicraft. 
We  know  that  God  could  have  poured  in  upon  him,  through 
a  thousand  channels,  the  means  of  subsistence  ;  and  we  be- 
lieve, therefore,  that  had  his  toiling  subserved  no  end  but  the 
removal  of  causes  of  offence,  his  wants  would  have  been  sup- 
plied, though  without  any  burden  on  the  churches.  So  lhat 
the  question  comes  before  us,  unsolved  and  unexamined, 
why  was  it  permitted  that  St.  Paul,  in  the  midst  of  his  exer- 
tions as  a  minister  of  Christ,  should  be  compelled  to  support 
himself  by  manual  occupation?  We  think  that  two  great 
reasons  may  be  advanced,  each  of  which  will  deserve  a  care- 
ful examination.  In  the  first  place,  God  hereby  put  much 
honor  upon  industry :  in  the  second  place,  God  hereby 
showed,  that  where  he  has  appointed  means,  he  will  not  work 
by  miracles.  We  will  take  these  reasons  in  succession,  pro- 
ceeding at  once  to  endeavor  to  prove,  that,  in  leaving  St. 
Paul  to  toil  as  a  tent-maker,  God  put  much  honor  upon 
industry. 

Now  it  is  true  that  the  appointment,  "  in  the  sweat  of  thy 
face  shalt  thou  eat  bread,"*  was  part  of  the  original  maledic- 
tion which  apostasy  caused  to  be  breathed  over  this  creation. 
But  it  is  equally  true  that  labor  was  God's  ordinance  whilst 
man  kept  unsullied  his  loyalty,  and  that  it  was  not  bound 
upon  our  race  as  altogether  a  consequence  on  transgression. 
We  may  not  believe  that  in  paradise  labor  could  ever  have 
been  wearisome  ;  but  we  know  that,  from  the  first,  labor  was 
actually  man's  business.  We  are  told,  in  the  book  of  Genesis, 
that  when  the  Lord  God  had  planted  the  garden,  and  fashion- 
ed man  after  his  own  image,  "  he  took  the  man  and  put  him 
into  the  garden,  to  dress  it,  and  to  keep  it."t    There  was  no 

*  Genesis,  3  :  19.— t  Ibid.  2  :  15. 


ST.    PAUL    A    TENTMAKER.  191 

curse  upon  the  ground  ;  and,  therefore,  we  suppose  not  that 
it  required,  ere  it  would  give  forth  a  produce,  the  processes 
of  a  diligent  husbandry.  But,  nevertheless,  it  is  clear  that  the 
resting  of  God's  first  blessing  on  the  soil  put  not  aside  all 
necessity  of  culture.  Man  was  a  laborer  from  the  beginning : 
God's  earliest  ordinance  appearing  to  have  been,  that  man 
should  not  be  an  idler.  So  that  whilst  we  admit  that  all  that 
painfulness  and  exhaustion,  which  waits  ordinarily  upon 
human  occupation,  must  be  traced  up  to  disobedience  as  a 
parent,  we  contend  that  employment  is  distinctly  God's  in- 
stitution for  mankind,  no  reference  whatsoever  being  made 
to  the  innocence  or  guiltiness  of  the  race.  God  sanctified  the 
seventh  day  as  a  day  of  rest,  before  Adam  disobeyed,  and 
thus  marked  out  six  days  as  days  of  labor  and  employment, 
before  sin  sowed  the  seeds  of  the  thorn  and  the  thistle.  We 
may  suppose,  that,  previously  to  the  fall,  labor,  so  to  speak, 
was  just  one  department  of  piety ;  and  that  in  tilling  the 
ground,  or  watching  the  herds,  man  was  as  religiously  oc- 
cupied as  when  communing  with  God  in  distinct  acts  of  de- 
votion. The  great  and  fatal  alteration  which  sin  has  intro- 
duced into  labor,  is,  that  a  wide  separation  has  been  made 
between  temporal  business  and  spiritual ;  so  that,  whilst  en- 
gaged in  providing  for  the  body,  we  seem  wholly  detached 
from  paying  attention  to  the  concerns  of  the  soul.  But  we 
hold  it  of  first-rate  importance  to  teach  men  that  this  separa- 
tion is  of  their  own  making,  and  not  of  God's  appointing, 
God  ordained  labor  :  and  God  also  ordained  that  man's  great 
business  on  earth  should  be  to  secure  his  soul's  safety  through 
eternity.  And  unless,  therefore,  we  admit  that  the  work  of  the 
soul's  salvation  may  be  actually  advanced  by,  and  through, 
our  worldly  occupations,  we  set  one  ordinance  of  God  against 
another,  and  represent  ourselves  as  impeded,  by  the  appoint- 
ments of  our  Maker,  in  the  very  business  most  pressed  on 
our  performance.  The  matter-of-fact  is.  that  God  may  as 
truly  be  served  by  the  husbandman  whilst  ploughing  up  his 
ground,  and  by  the  manufacturer  whilst  toiling  at  his  loom, 
and  by  the  merchant  whilst  engaged  in  his  commerce,  as  he 
can  be  by  any  of  these  men  when  gathered  by  the  Sabbath- 


192  ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER. 

bell  to  the  solemn  assembly.  It  is  a  perfect  libel  on  religion, 
to  represent  the  honest  trades  of  mankind  as  aught  else  but 
the  various  methods  in  which  God  may  be  honored  and 
obeyed.  We  do  not  merely  mean  that  worldly  occupations 
may  be  followed  without  harm  done  to  the  soul.  This  would 
be  no  vindication  of  God's  ordinance  of  labor.  We  mean 
that  they  may  be  followed  with  benefit  to  the  soul.  When 
God  led  the  eastern  magi  to  Christ,  he  led  them  by  a  star. 
He  attacked  them,  so  to  speak,  through  the  avenue  of  their 
profession.  Their  great  employment  was  that  of  observing 
(ho  heavenly  bodies.  And  God  sanctified  their  astronomy. 
He  might  have  taught  them  by  other  methods  which  seem 
to  us  more  direct.  But  it  pleased  Him  to  put  honor  on  their 
occupation,  and  to  write  his  lessons  in  that  glittering  alpha- 
bet with  which  their  studies  had  made  them  especially  con- 
versant. We  believe,  in  like  manner,  that  if  men  went  to 
their  daily  employments  with  something  of  the  temper  Avhich 
they  bring  to  the  ordinances  of  grace,  expecting  to  receive 
messages  from  God  through  trade,  and  through  labor,  as 
well  as  through  preaching  and  a  communion,  there  would 
be  a  vast  advancing  towards  spiritual  excellence  ;  and  men's 
experience  would  be,  that  the  Almighty  can  bring  them  into 
acquaintance  with  himself,  by  the  ploughshare,  and  the  ba- 
lances, and  the  cargo,  no  less  than  by  the  homily,  and  the 
closet-exercises,  and  the  public  devotions.  There  would  be 
an  anticipation  of  the  glorious  season,  sketched  out  by  pro- 
phecy, when  "  there  shall  be  upon  the  bells  of  the  horses, 
holiness  unto  the  Lord,  and  the  pots  in  the  Lord's  house 
shall  be  like  the  bowls  before  the  altar."* 

We  give  this  as  our  belief;  and  we  advance  as  our  reason, 
the  fact  that  labor  is  the  ordinance  of  God.  We  will  not 
have  industry  set  against  piety :  as  though  the  little  time 
which  men  can  snatch  from  secular  engagements  were  the 
only  time  which  they  can  give  to  their  Maker.  They  may 
give  all  to  God,  and,  nevertheless,  be  compelled  to  rise  early, 
and  late   take   rest,  in  order  to  earn   a  scanty  subsistence. 

*  Zechariah,  1  i  :  20. 


ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER.  193 

And  we  think,  that,  in  placing  an  apostle  under  the  neces- 
sity of  laboring  for  bread,  God  assigned  precisely  that  cha- 
racter to  industry  for  which  we  contend.  We  learn,  from  the 
exhibition  of  our  text,  that  there  is  no  inconsistency  between 
the  being  a  devoted  servant  of  Christ,  and  the  following  assi- 
duously a  toilsome  occupation.  Nay,  we  learn  that  it  may 
be,  literally,  as  the  servant  of  Christ  that  man  follows  the 
occupation  ;  for  it  was,  as  we  have  shown  you,  with  decided 
reference  to  the  interests  of  religion,  that  St.  Paul  joined 
Aquila  and  Priscilla  in  tent-making.  At  the  least,  there  is  a 
registered  demonstration  in  the  case  of  this  apostle,  that  un- 
wearied industry — for  he  elsewhere  declares  that  he  labored 
day  and  night— may  consist  with  pre-eminent  piety ;  and 
that,  so  far  from  the  pressure  of  secular  employment  being  a 
valid  excuse  for  slow  progress  in  godliness,  a  man  may  have 
to  struggle  against  absolute  pauperism,  and  yet  grow,  every 
moment,  a  more  admirable  christian.  Oh,  there  is  something 
in  this  representation  of  the  honor  put  by  God  upon  indus- 
try, which  should  tell  powerfully  on  the  feelings  of  those  to 
whom  life  is  one  long  striving  for  the  means  of  subsistence. 
It  were  as  nothing  to  tell  men,  you  may  be  good  christians 
in  spite  of  your  engrossing  employments.  The  noble  truth 
is,  that  these  employments  may  be  so  many  helpers  on  of  re- 
ligion; and  that,  in  place  of  serving  as  leaden  weights,  which 
retard  a  disciple  in  his  celestial  career,  they  may  be  as  the 
well-plumed  wings,  accelerating  gloriously  the  onward  pro- 
gress. In  laboring  to  support  himself,  St.  Paul  labored  to  ad- 
vance Christ's  cause.  And  though  there  be  not  always  the 
same  well-defined  connection  between'  our  toils  for  a  liveli- 
hood and  the  interests  of  religion,  yet,  let  a  connection  be 
practically  sought  after,  and  it  will  always  be  practically 
found.  The  case  exists  not  in  which,  after  making  it  obliga- 
tory on  a  man  that  he  work  for  his  bread,  God  has  not  ar- 
ranged, that,  in  thus  working,  he  may  work  also  for  the  well- 
being  of  his  soul.  If  ever,  therefore,  we  met  with  an  indivi- 
dual who  pleaded  that  there  were  already  so  many  calls 
upon  his  time  that  he  could  not  find  leisure  to  give  heed  to 
religion,  we  should  not  immediately  bear  down  upon  him 
25 


194  ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER, 

with  the  charge— though  it  might  be  a  just  one— ol  an  undue 
pursuit  of  the  things  of  this  earth.  We  should  only  require 
of  him  to  show  that  his  employments  were  scripturally 
lawful,  both  in  nature  and  intenseness.  We  should  then  meet 
him,  at  once,  on  the  ground  of  this  lawfulness.  We  should 
tell  him  that  employments  were  designed  to  partake  of  the 
nature  of  sacraments  ;  that,  in  place  of  their  being  excuses 
for  his  not  serving  God,  they  were  appointed  as  instruments 
by  which  he  might  serve  Him  ;  and  that,  consequently,  it 
was  only  because  he  had  practically  dissolved  a  partnership 
which  the  Almighty  had  formed,  the  partnership  between 
industry  and  piety,  that  he  was  driving  on,  with  a  reckless 
speed,  to  a  disastrous  and  desperate  bankruptcy.  And  if  he 
pretended  to  doubt  that  piety  and  industry  have  thus  been 
associated  by  God,  we  would  take  him  with  us  into  the  work- 
chamber  of  St.  Paul ;  and  there  showing  him  the  apostle 
toiling  against  want,  and  yet,  in  toiling,  serving  Christ 
Jesus — subsisting  by  his  artisanship,  and  yet  feeding  the 
zeal  of  his  soul  by  and  through  his  labors  for  the  support  of 
his  body — we  would  tell  the  questioner,  that  God  thus 
caused  a  mighty  specimen  to  be  given  of  an  instituted  con- 
nection between  secular  employment  and  spiritual  improve- 
ment;  and  whilst  we  send  him  to  the  writings  of  St.  Paul 
that  he  may  learn  what  it  is  to  be  industriously  religious,  we 
send  him  to  the  tent-making  of  St.  Paul  that  he  may  learn 
what  it  is  to  be  religiously  industrious. 

Now  we  might  insist  at  greater  length,  if  not  pressed  by 
the  remainder  of  our  subject,  on  the  honor  which  God  put 
upon  industry  when  lie  left  St.  Paul  to  toil  for  a  maintenance. 
But  we  leave  this  point  to  be  further  pondered  in  your  pri- 
vate meditations.  We  go  on,  according  to  the  arrangements 
of  our  discourse,  to  open  up  the  second  reason  which  we 
ventured  to  assign  for  this  allowed  dependence  of  an  apostle 
upon  labor  for  subsistence. 

We  stated  as  our  second  reason,  that  God  designed  here- 
by to  inform  us,  that  where  he  has  appointed  means  he  will 
not  work  by  miracles.  We  observe  that  unto  St.  Paul  had 
been  given  a  superhuman  energy,  so  that,  when  it  was  re- 


ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER.  195 

quired  as  a  witness  to  his  doctrine,  he  could  remove  diseases 
by  a  word  or  a  touch,  and  even  restore  life  to  the  dead.  We 
have  no  distinct  information  whether  men,  thus  supernatu- 
rally  equipped,  could  employ  the  power  at  every  time,  and 
for  every  purpose.  But  it  seems  most  consistent  with  Scrip- 
ture and  reason  to  suppose,  that,  when  specially  moved  by 
God,  they  could  always  work  miracles ;  but  that,  unless  thus 
moved,  their  strength  went  from  them,  and  they  remained 
no  mightier  than  their  fellows.  It  does  not  appear  that  apos- 
tles could  have  recourse  to  wonder-workings  in  every  exi- 
gence which  might  arise.  At  least,  it  is  certain  that  apostoli- 
cal men,  such  as  Ephaphroditus  and  Timothy,  went  through 
sicknesses,  and  suffered  from  weaknesses,  without  being  cured 
by  miracle,  and  without,  as  it  would  seem,  being  taxed  with 
deficiency  of  faith,  because  they  shook  not  off  the  malady,  or 
resisted  not  its  approaches.  When  St.  Paul  writes  to  Timothy 
in  regard  to  his  infirmities,  he  bids  him  use  wine  as  a  medi- 
cine ;  he  does  not  tell  him  to  seek  faith  to  work  a  miracle. 
Yet,  beyond  all  doubt,  Timothy  had  received  the  gifts  of  the 
Spirit.  And  from  this,  and  other  instances,  we  infer  that  then 
only  could  miracles  be  wrought,  when,  by  a  distinct  motion 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  faith  was  directed  to  some  particular 
achievement.  It  did  not  follow  that  because  St.  Peter,  by  a 
word,  had  struck  down  Ananias,  he  might,  by  a  word,  have 
immediately  afterwards  raised  him  up.  It  was  not  at  his  op- 
tion what  direction  the  miracle-working  faith  should  take. 
Whensoever  a  miracle  was  wrought,  it  was  wrought,  un- 
questionably, by  faith.  But  the  faith,  first  given  by  God,  re- 
quired ever  after  to  be  stirred  into  exercise  by  God ;  so  that 
no  conclusion  could  be  more  erroneous,  than  that  faith  must 
have  been  defective,  where  miracle  was  not  wrought. 

Now  we  advance  these  remarks,  in  order  to  justify  our 
not  claiming  for  St.  Paul,  what,  at  first  sight,  we  are  dis- 
posed to  claim,  the  praise  of  extraordinary  self-denial  in  gain- 
ing his  bread  by  labor,  when  he  might  have  gained  it  by 
miracle.  We  may  not  suppose,  that,  because  he  displayed 
oftentimes  a  superhuman  power,  he  could  necessarily,  had 
he  wished  it,  have  used  that  power  in  supplying  his  bodilv 


196  ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER. 

wants.  It  may  seem  to  us  no  greater  effort,  to  multiply,  as 
Christ  did,  a  loaf  into  hundreds,  than  to  command,  as  St. 
Paul  did,  the  impotent  man  at  Lystra  to  stand  upright  on 
his  feet.  Yet  it  were  a  false  conclusion  that  the  apostle  might 
have  done  the  one  as  well  as  the  other. 

The  working  of  miracles  presupposed,  as  we  have  shown 
you,  not  only  God's  giving  the  faith,  but  also  God's  permit- 
ting, or  rather  God's  directing,  its  exercise.  We  build,  there- 
fore, no  statements  on  the  supposition  that  St.  Paul  had  the 
power,  but  used  it  not,  of  procuring  food  by  miracle.  We 
rather  conclude  that  he  had  no  alternative  whatever ;  so 
that,  had  he  not  labored  at  tent-making,  he  must  have  been 
absolutely  destitute.  It  was  not  indeed  because  deficient  in 
faith  that  he  wrought  not  a  miracle.  He  had  the  faith  by 
which  lofty  hills  might  be  stirred,  provided  only — and  it  is 
this  proviso  which  men  strangely  overlook — that  he,  who 
had  given  him  the  faith,  directed  him  to  employ  it  on  up- 
heaving the  earth's  mountains. 

But  we  are  thus  brought  down  to  the  question,  why  was 
St.  Paul  not  permitted,  or  not  directed,  to  use  the  wonder- 
working energy,  in  place  of  being  necessitated  to  apply  him- 
self to  manual  occupation?  We  give  as  our  reply,  that  God 
might  hereby  have  designed  to  communicate  the  important 
truth,  that,  where  he  has  appointed  means,  we  are  not  to  look 
for  miracles.  Labor  was  his  own  ordinance.  So  long,  there- 
fore, as  labor  could  be  available  to  the  procuring  subsistence, 
he  would  not  supersede  this  ordinance  by  miraculous  inter- 
ference. There  is,  perhaps,  no  feature  more  strongly  charac- 
tered on  God's  dealings,  whether  in  natural  things  or  in  spi- 
ritual, than  that  it  is  in  the  use  of  means,  and  in  this  alone, 
that  blessings  may  be  expected.  We  see  clearly  that  this  is 
God's  procedure  in  reference  to  the  affairs  of  our  present 
state  of  being.  If  the  husbandman  neglect  the  processes  of 
agriculture,  there  comes  no  miracle  to  make  up  this  omis- 
sion of  means ;  but  harvest-time  finds  barrenness  reigning 
over  the  estate.  If  the  merchantman  sit  with  his  hands 
folded,  when  he  ought  to  be  busied  with  shipping  his  mer- 
chandise, there  is  nothing  to  be  expected  but  that  beggary 


ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER.  197 

will  ensue  upon  idleness.  And  we  hold  that  instances  such 
as  these,  so  familiar  that  they  are  often  overlooked,  must  be 
taken  as  illustrations  of  a  great  principle  whose  workings  per- 
meate all  God's  dispensations.  We  would  contend  that  there 
is  to  be  traced  in  our  spiritual  affairs  that  very  honoring  of 
means  which  is  thus  observable  in  our  temporal.  We  know 
nothing  of  the  fitness,  which  some  men  are  disposed  to  up- 
hold, of  waiting  the  effectual  calling  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and 
so  of  making  no  effort,  till  irresistibly  moved,  to  ecape  from 
the  bondage  of  corruption.  We  know  of  no  scriptural  me- 
thod of  addressing  transgressors  but  as  free  agents;  and  we 
abjure,  as  unsanctioned  by  the  Bible,  every  scheme  of  theo- 
logy which  would  make  men  nothing  more  than  machines. 
It  must  lie  at  the  foundation  of  all  religion,  whether  natural 
or  revealed,  that  men  are  responsible  beings  ;  and  responsi- 
ble they  cannot  be,  if  placed  under  an  invincible  moral  con- 
straint, which  allows  no  freedom  whatsoever  of  choice.  And 
we  think  it  a  thing  to  be  sorely  lamented,  that  there  goes  on 
a  battling  about  election  and  non-election  ;  the  combatants 
on  each  side  failing  to  perceive,  that  they  fight  for  the  pro- 
file, and  not  the  full  face,  of  truth.  It  seems  to  us  as  plain 
from  the  Bible  as  language  can  make  it,  that  God  hath 
elected  a  remnant  to  life.  It  is  just  as  plain,  that  all  men  are 
addressed  as  capable  of  repenting,  and  at  liberty  to  choose 
for  themselves  between  life  and  death.  Thus  we  have  scrip- 
tural warranty  of  God's  election  ;  and  we  have  also  scriptu- 
ral warranty  of  man's  free  agency.  But  how  can  these  ap- 
parently opposite  statements  be  reconciled  ?  I  know  not. 
The  Bible  tells  me  not.  But  because  I  cannot  be  wise  be- 
yond what  is  written,  God  forbid  that  I  should  refuse  to  be 
wise  up  to  what  is  written.  Scripture  reveals,  but  it  does  not 
reconcile,  the  two.  What  then  ?  I  receive  both,  and  I  preach 
both  ;  God's  election  and  man's  free  agency.  But  I  should 
esteem  it  of  all  presumptions  the  boldest  to  attempt  explana- 
tion of  the  co-existence. 

In  like  manner,  the  Bible  tells  me  explicitly  that  Christ 
was  God  ;  and  it  tells  me,  as  explicitly,  that  Christ  was  man, 
It  does  not  go  on  to  state  the  modus  or  manner  of  the  union. 


I9S  ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER. 

I  stop,  therefore,  where  the  Bible  stops.  I  bow  before  a  God- 
man  as  my  Mediator,  but  I  own  as  inscrutable  the  mysteries 
of  his  person. 

It  is  thus  also  with  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  Three 
persons  are  set  before  me  as  equally  divine.  At  the  same 
time,  I  am  taught  that  there  is  only  one  God.  How  can  the 
three  be  one,  and  the  one  be  three?  Silent  as  the  grave  is 
the  Bible  on  this  wonder.  But  I  do  not  reject  its  speech  be- 
cause of  its  silence.  I  believe  in  three  divine  persons,  be- 
cause told  of  a  Trinity ;  I  believe  in  one  only  God,  because 
told  of  an  Unity  :  but  I  leave  to  the  developments  of  a  nobler 
sphere  of  existence  the  clearing  up  the  marvel  of  a  Trinity 
in  Unity. 

The  admission,  then,  of  the  co-existence  of  election  and 
free-agency  is  but  the  counterpart  of  many  other  admissions 
which  are  made,  on  all  hands,  by  the  believers  in  revelation. 
And  having  assured  ourselves  of  this  joint  existence,  we  see, 
at  once,  that  man's  business  is  to  set  about  the  work  of  his 
salvation,  with  all  the  ardor,  and  all  the  painstaking,  of  one 
convinced  that  he  cannot  perish,  except  through  his  own 
fault.  We  address  him  as  an  immortal  creature  whose  des- 
tinies are  in  his  own  keeping.  We  will  hear  nothing  of  a 
secret  decree  of  God,  insuring  him  safe  passage  to  a  haven 
of  rest,  or  leaving  him  to  go  down  a  wreck  in  the  whirlpool. 
But  we  tell  him  of  a  command  of  God,  summoning  him  to 
put  forth  all  his  strength,  and  all  his  seamanship,  ere  the 
breakers  dash  against  him,  and  the  rocks  rise  around  him. 
We  thus  deal  with  man  as  a  responsible  being.  You  are 
waiting  for  a  miracle  ;  have  you  tried  the  means  ?  You  are 
trusting  to  a  hidden  purpose ;  have  you  submitted  yourselves 
to  a  revealed  command?  Sitting  still  is  no  proof  of  election. 
Grappling  with  evil  is  a  proof;  and  wrenching  one's-self  from 
hurtful  associations  is  a  proof;  and  studying  God's  word  is  a 
proof;  and  praying  for  assistance  is  a  proof.  He  who  resolves 
to  do  nothing  until  he  is  called — oh,  the  likelihood  is  beyond 
calculation,  that  he  will  have  no  call,  till  the  sheeted  dead 
are  starting  at  the  trumpet-call.  And  the  vessel — freighted 
as  she  was  with  noble  capacities,  with  intelligence,  and  rea- 


ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKLK.  199 

con,  and  forethought,  and  tiie  deep  throbbings  of  immortali- 
ty— what  account  shall  be  given  of  her  making  no  way  to- 
wards the  shores  of  the  saints'  home,  but  remaining  to  be 
broken  up  piecemeal  by  the  sweepings  of  the  judgment? 
Simply,  that  God  told  man  of  a  compass,  and  of  a  chart,  and 
of  a  wind,  and  of  a  pilot.  But  man  determined  to  remain  an- 
chored, until  God  should  come  and  tear  the  ship  from  her 
moorings.  God  has  appointed  means.  If  we  will  use  them 
diligently,  and  prayerfully,  we  may  look  for  a  blessing.  But 
if  we  despise  and  neglect  them,  we  must  not  look  for  a 
miracle. 

And  if  a  man  be  resolved  to  give  harborage  to  the  idea 
that  means  may  be  dispensed  with,  and  that  then  miracles 
will  be  wrought,  we  open  before  him  the  scenery  of  our  text, 
and  bid  him  behold  the  artificers  at  their  labor.  We  tell  him, 
that  around  one  of  these  workmen  the  priests  of  Jupiter  had 
thronged,  bearing  garlands,  and  bringing  sacrifices,  because 
of  a  displayed  mastery  over  inveterate  disease.  We  tell  him, 
that,  if  there  arose  an  occasion  demanding  the  exhibition  of 
prodigy  in  support  of  Christ's  Gospel,  this  toiling  artisan 
could  throw  aside  the  implements  of  trade,  and,  rushing  into 
the  crowded  arena,  confound  an  army  of  opponents  by  sus- 
pending the  known  laws  of  nature.  And,  nevertheless,  this 
mightily-gifted  individual  must  literally  starve,  or  drudge  for 
a  meal  like  the  meanest  mechanic.  And  why  so?  why,  but 
because  it  is  a  standing  appointment  of  God,  that  miracles 
shall  not  supercede  means?  If  there  were  no  means,  Paul 
should  have  his  bread  by  miracle.  But  whilst  there  is  the 
canvass,  and  the  cord,  and  the  sight  in  the  eye,  and  the 
strength  in  the  limb,  he  may  carry  on  the  trade  of  a  tent- 
maker.  He  has  the  tools  of  his  craft :  let  him  use  them  in- 
dustriously,  and  not  sit  inactive,  hoping  to  be  supported  mi- 
raculously. And,  arguing  from  this  as  a  thorough  specimen 
of  God's  ordinary  dealings,  we  tell  the  expectant  of  an  effec- 
tual call,  that  he  waits  as  an  idler  whilst  God  requires  him 
to  work  as  a  laborer.  Where  are  the  tools?  Why  left  on  the 
ground,  when  they  should  be  in  the  hand  ?  Where  are  the 
means  ?  Why  passed  over,  when  they  ought  to  be  employed  1 


209  SF.    PAUL    A    TENI-MAKLR. 

Why  neglected,  when  they  should  be  honored  1  Why  treated 
as  worthless,  when  God  declares  them  efficacious  1  It  is  true 
that  conversion  is  a  miracle.  But  God's  common  method  of 
working  this  miracle  is  through  the  machinery  of  means.  It 
is  true  that  none  but  the  elect  can  be  saved.  But  the  only 
way  to  ascertain  election  is  to  be  laborious  in  striving.  I  read 
St.  Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Romans  ;  and  I  find  the  apostle  say- 
ing, "  so  then  it  is  not  of  him  that  willeth,  nor  of  him  that 
runneth,  but  of  God  that  showeth  mercy."*  What  then  ?  Must 
I,  on  this  account,  run  not,  but  sit  still,  expecting  the  ap- 
proaches of  mercy?  Away  with  the  thought.  Means  are  God's 
high  road  to  miracles.  I  turn  from  the  apostle  writing  to  the 
Romans  to  the  apostle  toiling  at  Corinth.  And  when  I  look  on 
the  labors  of  the  tent-maker,  and  infer  from  them  that  miracles 
must  not  be  expected  where  means  have  been  instituted,  and 
that,  consequently,  whensoever  God  has  appointed  means, 
miracle  is  to  be  looked  for  only  in  their  use  ;  oh,  in  place  of 
loitering  because  I  have  read  of  election,  I  would  gird  up  the 
loins  as  having  gazed  on  the  tent-making  ;  and  in  place  of 
running  not,  because  it  is  "  of  God  that  showeth  mercy," 
run  might  and  main,  because  it  is  to  those  who  are  running 
that  he  shows  it. 

When  God  decrees  an  end,  he  decrees  also  the  means.  If 
then  he  have  elected  me  to  obtain  salvation  in  the  next  life, 
he  has  elected  me  to  the  practice  of  holiness  in  this  life. 
Would  I  ascertain  my  election  to  the  blessedness  of  eternity  1 
it  must  be  by  practically  demonstrating  my  election  to  new- 
ness of  life.  It  is  not  by  the  rapture  of  feeling,  and  by  the 
luxuriance  of  thought,  and  by  the  warmth  of  those  desires 
which  descriptions  of  heaven  may  stir  up  within  me,  that  I 
can  prove  myself  predestined  to  a  glorious  inheritance.  If  I 
would  find  out  what  is  hidden,  I  must  follow  what  is  reveal- 
ed. The  way  to  heaven  is  disclosed  ;  am  I  walking  in  that 
way  ?  It  would  be  poor  proof  that  I  were  on  my  voyage  to 
India,  that,  with  glowing  eloquence  and  thrilling  poetry,  I 
could  discourse  on  the  palm-groves  and  the  spice-isles  of  the 

*  Romans,  9  :  16. 


ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER.  201 

East.  Am  I  on  the  waters  ?  Is  the  sail  hoisted  to  the  wind  ; 
and  does  the  land  of  my  birth  look  blue  and  faint  in  the  dis- 
tance? The  doctrine  of  election  may  have  done  harm  to 
many — but  only  because  they  have  fancied  themselves 
elected  to  the  end,  and  have  forgotten  that  those  whom 
Scripture  calls  elected  are  elected  to  the  means.  The  Bible 
never  speaks  of  men  as  elected  to  be  saved  from  the  ship- 
wreck ;  but  only  as  elected  to  tighten  the  ropes,  and  hoist 
the  sails,  and  stand  to  the  rudder.  Let  a  man  search  faith- 
fully ;  let  him  see  that  when  Scripture  describes  christians 
as  elected,  it  is,  as  elected  to  faith,  as  elected  to  sanctiflcation, 
as  elected  to  obedience  ;  and  the  doctrine  of  election  will  be 
nothing  but  a  stimulus  to  effort.  It  cannot  act  as  a  soporific. 
It  cannot  lull  me  into  security.  It  cannot  engender  licen- 
tiousness. It  will  throw  ardor  into  the  spirit,  and  fire  into 
the  eye,  and  vigor  into  the  limb.  I  shall  cut  away  the  boat, 
and  let  drive  all  human  devices,  and  gird  myself,  amid  the 
fierceness  of  the  tempest,  to  steer  the  shattered  vessel  into 
port. 

Now  having  thus  examined  the  reasons  why  St.  Paul 
was  left  dependent  upon  labor  for  subsistence,  we  hasten  at 
once  to  wind  up  our  subject.  We  have  had  under  review 
two  great  and  interesting  truths.  We  have  seen  that  labor  is 
God's  ordinance.  Be  it  yours,  therefore,  to  strive  earnestly 
that  your  worldly  callings  may  be  sanctified,  so  that  trade 
may  be  the  helpmate  of  religion,  instead  of  its  foe  and  assas- 
sin. We  have  seen  also,  that,  when  God  has  instituted 
means,  we  can  have  no  right  to  be  looking  for  miracles. 
Will  ye  then  sit  still,  expecting  God  to  compel  you  to  move  ? 
Will  ye  expose  yourselves  wantonly  to  temptation,  expecting 
God  to  make  you  impregnable  ?  Will  ye  take  the  viper  to 
your  bosoms,  expecting  God  to  charm  away  the  sting?  Will 
ye  tamper  with  the  poison-cup,  expecting  God  to  neutralize 
the  hemlock  ?  Then  why  did  not  St.  Paul,  in  place  of  work- 
ing the  canvass  into  a  tent,  expect  God  to  convert  it  into 
food  ?  We  do  not  idolize  means.  We  do  not  substitute  the 
means  of  grace  for  grace  itself.  But  this  we  say — and  we 
beseech  you  to  carry  with  you  the  truth  to  your  homes— 
26 


202  ST.    PAUL    A    TENT-MAKER. 

when  God  has  made  a  channel,  he  maybe  expected  to  send 
through  that  channel  the  Sowings  of  his  mercy.  Oh  !  that 
ye  were  anxious ;  that  ye  would  take  your  right  place  in 
creation,  and  feel  yourselves  immortal !  Be  men,  and  ye 
make  a  vast  advance  towards  being  Christians.  Many  of  you 
have  long  refused  to  labor  to  be  saved.  The  implements  are 
in  your  hands,  but  you  will  not  work  at  the  tent-making. 
Ye  will  not  pray ;  ye  will  not  shun  temptation  ;  ye  will  not 
renounce  known  sin  ;  ye  will  not  fight  against  evil  habits. 
Are  ye  stronger  than  God  ?  Can  ye  contend  with  the  Eter- 
nal One?  Have  ye  the  nerve  which  shall  not  tremble,  and 
the  flesh  which  shall  not  quiver,  and  the  soul  which  shall 
not  quail,  when  the  sheet  of  fire  is  round  the  globe,  and 
thousand  times  ten  thousand  angels  line  the  sky,  and  call  to 
judgment?  If  we  had  a  spell  by  which  to  bind  the  ministers 
of  vengeance,  we  might  go  on  in  idleness.  If  we  had  a  charm 
by  which  to  take  what  is  scorching  from  the  flame,  and  what 
is  gnawing  from  the  worm,  we  might  continue  the  careless. 
But  if  we  can  feel ;  if  we  are  not  pain-proof;  if  we  are  not 
wrath-proof;  let  us  arise,  and  be  doing,  and,  with  fear  and 
trembling,  work  out  salvation.  There  shall  yet  burst  on  this 
creation  a  day  of  fire  and  of  storm,  and  of  blood — oh  !  con- 
form yourselves  to  the  simple  prescriptions  of  the  Bible  ; 
seek  the  aids  of  God's  Spirit  by  prayer,  and  ye  shall  be  led 
to  lay  hold  on  Christ  Jesus  by  faith. 


SERMON    X. 


THE  ADVANTAGES  OF  A  STATE  OF  EXPECTATION. 


"  It  is  good  that  a  man  should  both  hope  and  quietly  wait  for  the  salvation 
of  the  Lord." — Lamentations,  3  :  26. 

You  will  find  it  said  in  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  "  Because 
to  every  purpose  there  is  time  and  judgment,  therefore  the 
misery  of  man  is  great  upon  him."*  It  seems  to  us  implied 
in  these  words,  that  our  incapacity  of  looking  into  the  future 
has  much  to  do  with  the  production  of  disquietude  and  un- 
happiness.  And  there  is  no  question,  that  the  darkness  in 
which  we  are  compelled  to  proceed,  and  the  uncertainty 
which  hangs  round  the  issues  of  our  best-arranged  schemes, 
contribute  much  to  the  troubles  and  perplexities  of  life.  Un- 
der the  present  dispensation  we  must  calculate  on  probabili- 
ties ;  and  our  calculations,  when  made  with  the  best  care 
and  forethought,  are  often  proved  faulty  by  the  result.  And 
if  we  could  substitute  certainty  for  probability,  and  thus  de- 
fine, with  a  thorough  accuracy,  the  workings  of  any  pro- 
posed plan,  it  is  evident  that  we  might  be  saved  a  vast  amount 
both  of  anxiety  and  of  disappointment.  Much  of  our  anxie- 
ty is  now  derived  from  the  doubtfulness  of  the  success  of 
schemes,  and  from  the  likelihood  of  obstruction  and  mis- 
chance :  much  of  our  disappointment  from  the  overthrow 
and  failure  of  long-cherished  purposes.  And,  of  course,  if 
we  possessed  the  same  mastery  of  the  future  as  of  the  past, 
we  should  enter  upon  nothing  which  was  sure  to  turn  out 

*  Ecclesiastes,  8  :  6. 


204  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

ill;  but,  regulating  ourselves  in  every  undertaking  by  fore 
known  results,  avoid  much  of  previous  debate  and  of  after 
regret. 

Yet  when  we  have  admitted,  that  want  of  acquaintance 
with  the  future  gives  rise  to  much  both  of  anxiety  and  of 
disappointment,  we  are  prepared  to  argue,  that  the  posses- 
sion of  this  acquaintance  would  be  incalculably  more  detri- 
mental. It  is  quite  true  that  there  are  forms  and  portions  of 
trouble  which  might  be  warded  off  or  escaped,  if  we  could 
behold  what  is  coming,  and  take  measures  accordingly.  But 
it  is  to  the  full  as  true,  that  the  main  of  what  shall  befall  us 
is  matter  of  irrevocable  appointment,  to  be  averted  by  no 
prudence,  and  dispersed  by  no  bravery.  And  if  we  could 
know  beforehand  whatever  is  to  happen,  we  should,  in  all 
probability,  be  unmanned  and  enervated  ;  so  that  an  arrest 
would  be  put  on  the  businesses  of  life  by  previous  acquain- 
tance with  their  several  successes.  The  parent,  who  is  pour 
ing  his  attention  on  the  education  of  a  child,  or  laboring  to 
procure  for  him  advancement  and  independence,  would  be 
unable  to  go  forward  with  his  efforts,  if  certified  that  he 
must  follow  that  child  to  the  grave  so  soon  as  he  had  fitted 
him  for  society  and  occupation.  And  even  if  the  map  were  a 
bright  one,  so  that  we  looked  on  sunny  things  as  fixed  for 
our  portion,  familiarity  with  the  prospect  would  deteriorate 
it  to  our  imagination  ;  and  blessings  would  seem  to  us  of  less 
and  less  worth,  as  they  came  on  us  more  and  more  as  mat- 
ters of  course.  In  real  truth,  it  is  our  ignorance  of  what  shall 
happen  which  stimulates  exertion  :  we  are  so  constituted  that 
to  deprive  us  of  hope  would  be  to  make  us  inactive  and 
wretched.  And,  therefore,  do  we  hold  that  one  great  proof 
of  God's  loving-kindness  towards  us,  may  be  fetched  from 
'hat  impenetrable  concealment  in  which  he  wraps  up  to- 
morrow. We  long  indeed  to  bring  to-morrow  into  to-day, 
and  strain  the  eye  in  the  fruitless  endeavor  to  scan  its  occur- 
jcucjs.  But  it  is,  in  a  great  degree,  my  ignorance  of  to-mor- 
row vhich  makes  me  vigilant,  and  energetic,  and  pains- 
taking, to-day.  And  if  I  could  see  to-day  that  a  great  calami- 
ty or  a  great  success  would  undoubtedly  befall  me  to-mor- 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  205 

row,  the  likelihood  is  that  I  should  be  so  overcome,  either 
by  sorrow  or  by  delight,  as  to  be  unfitted  for  those  duties 
with  which  the  present  hour  is  charged. 

Now  it  were  easy  to  employ  ourselves  in  examining,  more 
in  detail,  the  bearings  on  our  temporal  well-being  of  that 
hiding  of  the  future  to  which  we  have  adverted.  Neither 
would  such  examination  be  out  of  place  in  a  discourse  on 
the  words  of  our  text.  The  prophet  refers  chiefly  to  tempo- 
ral deliverance,  when  mentioning  "the  salvation  of  the 
Lord."  Judah  had  gone  into  captivity:  and  Jerusalem,  here- 
tofore a  queen  amongst  the  cities,  sat  widowed  and  desolate. 
Yet  Jeremiah  was  persuaded  that  the  Lord  would  "  not  cast 
off  for  ever  ;"*  and  he,  therefore,  encouraged  the  remnant  of 
his  countrymen  to  expect  a  better  and  brighter  season.  He 
does  not,  indeed,  predict  immediate  restoration.  But  then  he 
asserts  that  delayed  mercy  would  be  more  advantageous 
than  instant,  and  that  profit  might  be  derived  from  expecta- 
tion as  well  as  from  possession.  If  we  paraphrase  his  words, 
we  may  consider  him  saying  to  the  stricken  and  disconsolate 
Jews,  you  wish  an  immediate  interference  of  God  on  behalf 
of  your  city  and  nation.  You  desire,  that,  without  a  mo- 
ment's delay,  the  captive  tribes  should  march  back  from  Ba- 
bylon, and  Jerusalem  rise  again  in  her  beauty  and  her 
strength.  But  if  this  wish  were  complied  with,  it  would  be 
at  the  expense  of  much  of  the  benefit  derivable  from  afflic- 
tion :  for  "  it  is  good  that  a  man  should  both  hope  and  quiet- 
ly wait  for  the  salvation  of  the  Lord." 

Thus  the  original  design  of  the  passage  would  warrant 
our  taking  a  large  sweep  in  its  explanation,  and  leading  you 
over  that  range  of  inquiry  which  is  opened  by  our  introduc- 
tory remarks.  We  might  dilate  on  the  advantageousness  of 
the  existing  arrangement,  and  its  wondrous  adaptation  to 
our  moral  constitution.  We  might  show  you,  by  references 
to  the  engagements  and  intercourses  of  life,  that  it  is  for  our 
profit  that  we  be  uncertain  as  to  issues,  and,  therefore,  re- 
quired both  to  hope  and  to  wait.    We  doubt  whether  you 

*  Lamentations,  3  -.31. 


206  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

could  imagine  a  liner  discipline  for  the  human  mind,  than 
results  from  the  fixed  impossibility  of  our  grasping  two  mo- 
ments at  once.  The  chief  opponent  to  that  feeling  of  inde- 
pendence which  man  naturally  cherishes,  but  always  to  his 
own  hurt,  is  his  utter  ignorance  of  the  events  of  the  next  mi- 
nute. For  who  can  boast,  or  who  can  feel  himself,  indepen- 
dent, whilst  unable  to  insure  another  beat  of  the  pulse,  or  to 
decide  whether,  before  he  can  count  two,  he  shall  be  spoiled 
of  life  or  reduced  to  beggary?  It  is  only  in  proportion  as 
men  close  their  eyes  to  their  absolute  want  of  mastership 
over  the  future,  that  they  encourage  themselves  in  the  delu- 
sion of  independence.  If  they  owned,  and  felt  themselves, 
the  possessors  of  a  single  moment,  with  no  more  power  to 
secure  the  following  than  if  the  proposed  period  were  a  thou- 
sand centuries,  we  might  set  it  down  as  an  unavoidable  con- 
sequence, that  they  Would  shun  the  presumption  of  so  acting 
for  themselves  as  though  God  were  excluded  from  superin- 
tending their  affairs.  And  if  there  were  introduced  an  op- 
posite arrangement ;  if  men  were  no  longer  placed  under  a 
system  compelling  them  to  hope  and  to  wait ;  you  may  all 
see  that  the  acquired  power  over  the  future  would  produce, 
in  many  quarters,  an  infidel  contempt,  or  denial,  of  Provi- 
dence :  so  that,  by  admitting  men  to  a  closer  inspection  of 
his  workings,  God  would  throw  them  further  off  from  ac- 
quaintance with  himself  and  reverence  of  his  majesties. 
Thus  the  goodness  of  the  existing  arrangement  is  matter  of 
easy  demonstration,  when  that  arrangement  is  considered  as 
including  the  affairs  of  e very-day  life.  If  you  look  at  the 
consummation  as  ordinarily  far  removed  from  the  formation 
of  a  purpose,  there  is,  we  again  say,  a  fine  moral  discipline 
in  the  intervening  suspense.  That  men  may  withstand,  or 
overlook,  the  discipline,  and  so  miss  its  advantages,  tells  no- 
thing against  either  its  existence,  or  its  excellence.  And  the 
necessity  which  is  laid  on  the  husbandman,  that,  after  sow- 
ing the  seed,  he  wait  long  for  the  harvest-time,  in  hope,  but 
not  certainty;  and  upon  the  merchantman,  that,  after  dis- 
patching his  ships,  he  wait  long  for  the  products  of  com- 
merce, hoping,  but  far  enough  from  sure,  that  the  voyage 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  207 

and  the  traffic  will  be  prosperous  ;  this  necessity,  we  say,  for 
hoping  and  wailing  reads  the  best  of  all  lessons  as  to  actual 
dependence  on  an  invisible  being;  and  thus  verifies  our  posi- 
tion, that,  "whatever  the  desired  advantage,  "  it  is  good  that 
a  man  should  both  hope  and  quietly  wait  for"  its  possession. 
Aye,  and  we  are  well  convinced  that  there  cannot  be  found 
a  nobler  argument  for  the  existence  of  a  staunch  moral  gov- 
ernment over  the  creatures  of  our  race,  than  results  from  this 
imposed  necessity  that  there  elapse  a  period,  and  that  too  a 
period  full  of  uncertainties,  between  the  forming  and  com- 
pleting a  design.  Amid  all  the  mutiny  and  uproar  of  our  pre- 
sent torn  and  disorganized  condition,  there  is  a  voice,  in  our 
utter  powerlessness  to  make  sure  of  the  future,  which  conti- 
nually recalls  man  from  his  rebellion  and  scepticism ;  and 
which,  proclaiming,  in  accents  not  to  be  overborne  by  the 
fiercest  tempest  of  passion,  that  he  holds  every  thing  at  the 
will  of  another,  shall  demand  irresistibly  his  condemnation 
at  any  oncoming  trial,  if  he  carry  it  with  a  high  and  inde- 
pendent hand  against  the  being  thus  proved  the  uncontrolled 
lord  of  his  destinies. 

But  we  feel  it  necessary  to  bring  our  inquiry  within  nar- 
rower limits,  and  to  take  the  expression,  "  the  salvation  of  the 
Lord,:'  in  that  more  restrained  sense  which  it  bears  ordinarily 
in  Scripture.  We  shall  employ,  therefore,  the  remainder  of 
our  time  in  endeavoring  to  prove  to  you,  by  the  simplest  rea- 
soning, that  it  is  for  our  advantage  as  christians  that  salva- 
tion, in  place  of  being  a  thing  of  certainty  and  present  pos- 
session, must  be  hoped  and  quietly  waited  for  by  believers. 

Now  whilst  it  is  the  business  of  a  christian  minister  to 
guard  you  against  presumption,  and  an  uncalculating  confi- 
dence that  you  are  safe  for  eternity,  it  is  also  his  duty  to 
rouse  you  to  a  sense  of  your  privileges,  and  to  press  on  you 
the  importance  of  ascertaining  your  title  to  immortality.  We 
think  it  not  necessarily  a  proof  of  christian  humility,  that 
you  should  be  always  in  doubt  of  your  spiritual  state,  and  so 
live  uncertain  whether,  in  the  event  of  death,  you  would 
pass  into  glory.  We  are  bound  to  declare  that  Scripture 
makes  the  marks  of  true  religion  clear  and  decisive  ;  and 


203  THE     ADVANTAGES    OF 

that,  if  we  will  but  apply,  faithfully  and  fearlessly,  the  seve- 
ral criteria  furnished  by  its  statements,  it  cannot  remain  a 
problem,  which  the  last  judgment  only  can  solve,  whether  it 
be  the  broad  way,  or  the  narrow,  in  which  we  now  walk. 
But,  nevertheless,  the  best  assurance  to  which  a  christian  can 
attain  must  leave  salvation  a  thing  chiefly  of  hope.  We  find 
it  expressly  declared  by  St.  Paul  to  the  Romans,  "  we  are 
saved  by  hope."*  And  they  who  are  most  persuaded,  and  that 
too  by  scriptural  warrant,  that  they  are  in  a  state  of  salva- 
tion, can  never  declare  themselves,  except  in  Ihe  most  limit- 
ed sense,  in  its  fruition  or  enjoyment ;  but  must  always  live 
mainly  upon  hope,  though  with  occasional  foretastes  of  com- 
ing delights.  They  can  reach  the  conclusion — and  a  com- 
forting and  noble  conclusion  it  is — that  they  are  justified 
beings,  as  having  been  enabled  to  act  faith  on  a  Mediator. 
But  whilst  justification  insures  them  salvation,  it  puts  them 
not  into  its  present  possession.  It  is  thus  again  that  St.  Paul 
distinguishes  between  justification  and  salvation,  saying  of 
Christ,  "  being  now  justified  by  his  blood,  we  shall  be  saved 
from  wrath  through  him."t  So  that  the  knowing  ourselves 
justified  is  the  highest  thing  attainable  on  earth ;  salvation 
itself,  though  certain  to  be  reached,  remaining  an  object  for 
which  we  must  hope,  and  for  which  we  must  wait. 

Now  it  is  the  goodness  of  this  arrangement  which  is  as- 
serted in  our  text.  We  can  readily  suppose  an  opposite  ar- 
rangement. We  can  imagine,  that,  as  soon  as  a  man  were 
justified,  he  might  be  translated  to  blessedness,  and  that  thus 
the  gaining  the  title,  and  the  entering  on  possession,  might 
be  always  contemporary.  Since  the  being  justified  is  the 
being  accepted  in  God's  sight,  and  counted  perfectly  righte- 
ous, there  would  seem  no  insurmountable  reason  why  the 
justified  man  should  be  left,  a  single  moment,  a  wanderer  in 
the  desert ;  or  why  the  instant  of  the  exertion  of  saving  faith, 
inasmuch  as  that  exertion  makes  sure  the  salvation,  should 
not  also  be  the  instant  of  entrance  into  glory.  To  question 
the  possibility  of  such  an  arrangement,  would  be  to  question 

*  Romans,  8  :  ?4.~t  Ibid.  5  :  9. 


A.    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  209 

the  possibility  of  an  outputting  of  faith  at  the  last  moment  of 
life  :  for,  unless  what  is  called  death-bed  repentance  be  dis- 
tinctly an  impossible  thing,  the  case  is  clearly  snpposable  of 
the  justifying  act  being  immediately  followed  by  admission 
into  heaven. 

But  the  possibility  of  the  arrangement,  and  its  goodness, 
are  quite  different  questions ;  and  whilst  we  see  that  it  might 
have  been  ordered,  that  the  justified  man  should  at  once  be 
translated,  we  can  still  believe  it  good  that  he  "  both  hope 
and  quietly  wait  for  the  salvation  of  the  Lord."  Our  text 
speaks  chiefly  of  the  goodness  to  the  individual  himself;  but 
it  will  be  lawful  first  to  consider  the  arrangement  as  fraught 
with  advantage  to  human  society. 

We  must  all  perceive,  that,  if  true  believers  were  with- 
drawn from  earth  at  the  instant  of  their  becoming  such,  the 
influences  of  piety,  which  now  make  themselves  felt  through 
the  mass  of  a  population,  would  be  altogether  destroyed,  and 
the  world  be  deprived  of  that  salt  which  alone  preserves  it 
from  total  decomposition.  We  believe  that  when  Christ  de- 
clared of  his  followers,  "  ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth,"*  he 
delivered  a  saying  which  described,  with  singular  fidelity, 
the  power  of  righteousness  to  stay  and  correct  the  disorgani- 
zations of  mankind.  As  applied  to  the  apostles  the  definition 
was  especially  accurate.  There  lay  before  them  a  world  dis- 
tinguished by  nothing  so  much  as  by  corruption  of  doctrine 
and  manners.  Though  philosophy  was  at  its  height ;  though 
reason  had  achieved  her  proudest  triumphs ;  though  arts 
were  in  their  maturity ;  though  eloquence  was  then  most 
finished,  and  poetry  most  harmonious ;  there  reigned  over 
the  whole  face  of  the  globe  a  tremendous  ignorance  of 
God :  and  if  humanity  were  not  actually  an  unsound  and 
putrid  mass,  it  had  in  it  every  element  of  decay,  so  that,  if 
longer  abandoned  to  itself,  it  must  have  fallen  into  incurable 
disease,  and  become  covered  with  the  livid  spots  of  total  dis- 
solution. And  when,  by  divine  commission,  the  disciples  pe- 
netrated the  recesses  of  this  mass,  carrying  with  them  prin- 

*  Matthew,  5  :  13. 
27 


210  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

ciples,  and  truths,  exactly  calculated  to  stay  the  moral  ruin 
which  was  spreading  with  fearful  rapidity — when  they  went 
forth,  the  bearers  of  celestial  communications  which  taught 
the  soul  to  feel  herself  immortal,  and,  therefore,  indestructi- 
ble ;  which  lifted  even  the  body  out  of  the  grasp  of  decay, 
teaching  that  bone,  and  sinew,  and  flesh  should  be  made  at 
last  gloriously  incorruptible — when,  we  say,  the  disciples 
thus  applied  to  the  world  a  remedy,  perfect  in  every  respect, 
against  those  tendencies  to  corruption  which  threatened  to 
turn  our  globe  into  the  lazar-house  of  creation ;  were  they 
not  to  be  regarded  as  the  purifiers  and  preservers  of  men,  and 
could  any  title  be  more  just  than  one  which  defined  them, 
in  their  strivings  to  overspread  a  diseased  world  with  health- 
fulness,  as  literally  "  the  salt  of  the  earth  ?" 

But  it  holds  good  in  every  age  that  true  believers  are  "  the 
salt  of  the  earth."  Whilst  the  contempt  and  hatred  of  the 
wicked  follow  incessantly  the  professors  of  godliness,  and 
the  enemies  of  Christ,  if  ability  were  commensurate  with  ma- 
lice, would  sweep  from  the  globe  all  knowledge  of  the  Gos- 
pel, we  can  venture  to  assert  that  the  unrighteous  owe  the 
righteous  a  debt  of  obligation  not  to  be  reckoned  up ;  and 
that  it  is  mainly  because  the  required  ten  are  still  found  in 
the  cities  of  the  plain  that  the  fire-showers  are  suspended, 
and  time  given  for  the  warding  off  by  repentance  the  doom. 
And  over  and  above  this  conservative  virtue  of  godliness,  it 
is  undeniable  that  the  presence  of  a  pious  man  in  a  neigh- 
borhood will  tell  greatly  on  its  character ;  and  that,  in  va- 
riety of  instances,  his  withdrawment  would  be  followed  by 
wilder  outbreakings  of  profligacy.  It  must  have  fallen,  we 
think,  within  the  power  of  many  of  you  to  observe,  how  a 
dissolute  parish  has  undergone  a  species  of  moral  renova- 
tion, through  the  introduction  within  its  circles  of  a  God- 
fearing individual.  He  may  be  despised  ;  he  may  be  scorned  ; 
he  may  be  railed  at.  The  old  may  call  him  methodist,  and 
the  young  make  him  their  laughing-stock.  But,  neverthe- 
less, if  he  live  consistently,  if  he  give  the  adversary  no  occa- 
sion to  blaspheme,  he  will  often ,  by  his  very  example,  go  a  long 
way  towards  stopping  the  contagion  of  vice  :  he  will  act,  that 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  211 

is,  as  the  salt :  and  if  he  succeed  not — for  this  is  beyond  the 
power  of  the  salt — in  restoring1  to  a  wholesome  texture  what 
is  fatally  tainted,  he  will  be  instrumental  to  the  preserving 
much  which  would  otherwise  have  soon  yielded  to  the  de- 
structive malaria.  It  is  not  merely  that  his  temporal  circum- 
stances may  have  given  him  ascendancy  over  his  fellows. 
There  is  in  the  human  mind — we  dare  not  say,  a  bias  to- 
wards virtue,  but — an  abiding-,  and  scarcely  to  be  overborne 
consciousness,  that  such  ought  to  be  the  bias,  and  that, 
whensoever  the  practical  leaning  is  to  vice,  there  is  irresisti- 
ble evidence  of  moral  derangement.  Whatever  the  extent 
of  human  degeneracy,  you  will  not  find  that  right  and 
wrong  have  so  changed  places,  that,  in  being  the  slaves 
of  vice,  men  reckon  themselves  the  subjects  of  virtue.  There 
is  a  gnawing  restlessness  in  those  who  have  most  abandoned 
themselves  to  the  power  of  evil ;  and  much  of  the  fierceness 
of  their  profligacy  is  ascribable  to  a  felt  necessity  of  keeping 
down,  and  stifling,  reproachful  convictions.  And  hence  it 
comes  to  pass  that  vice  will  ordinarily  feel  rebuked  and  over- 
awed by  virtue,  and  that  the  men,  whom  you  would  think 
dead  to  all  noble  principle,  will  be  disturbed  by  the  presence 
of  an  upright  and  God-fearing  character.  The  voice  of 
righteousness  will  find  something  of  an  echo  amid  the  dis- 
order and  confusion  of  the  worst  moral  chaos  ;  and  the  strings 
of  conscience  are  scarcely  ever  so  dislocated  and  torn  as  not 
to  yield  even  a  whisper,  when  swept  by  the  hand  of  a  high- 
virtued  monitor.  So  that  the  godly  in  a  neighborhood  wield 
an  influence  which  is  purely  that  of  godliness ;  and,  when 
denied  opportunities  of  direct  interference,  check  by  exam- 
ple, and  reprove  by  conduct.  You  could  not  then  measure 
to  us  the  consequences  of  the  withdrawment  of  the  salt  from 
the  mass  of  a  population  ;  nor  calculate  the  rapidity  with 
which,  on  the  complete  removal  of  God-fearing  men,  an 
overwhelming  corruption  would  pervade  all  society.  But 
this  is  exactly  what  must  occur,  if  a  system,  opposite  to  the 
present,  were  introduced,  so  that  salvation  were  not  a  thing 
to  be  hoped  and  waited  for.  If  as  soon  as  a  man  were  jus- 
tified, through  being  enabled  to  act  faith  upon  Christ,  he 


212  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

were  translated  to  the  repose  and  blessedness  of  heaven,  he 
could  exert  nothing  of  that  influence,  and  work  nothing  of 
that  benefit,  which  we  have  now  traced  and  exhibited.  And, 
therefore,  in  proportion  as  the  influence  is  important  and  the 
benefit  considerable,  we  must  be  warranted  in  maintaining 
it  "  good,  that  a  man  should  both  hope  and  quietly  wait  for 
the  salvation  of  the  Lord." 

It  is,  however,  the  goodness  of  the  arrangement  to  the  in- 
dividual himself  which  seems  chiefly  contemplated  by  the 
prophet,  and  upon  this,  therefore,  we  shall  employ  the  re- 
mainder of  our  discourse.  Now,  under  this  point  of  view, 
our  text  is  simpler  at  first  sight  than  when  rigidly  examined. 
We  can  see,  at  once,  that  there  is  a  spiritual  discipline  in  the 
hoping  and  waiting,  which  can  scarcely  fail  to  improve 
greatly  the  character  of  the  christian.  But,  nevertheless, 
would  it  not,  on  the  whole,  be  vastly  for  his  personal  advan- 
tage that  he  should  leave  speedily  this  theatre  of  conflict  and 
trouble,  and  be  admitted,  without  a  wearisome  delay,  into 
the  mansion  which  Christ  has  prepared  for  his  residence  ? 
We  have  already  shown  you  that  there  can  exist  no  actual 
necessity,  that  he  who  is  justified  should  not  be  immediate- 
ly glorified.  We  are  bound  to  believe  that  a  justified  man — 
and,  beyond  all  question,  a  man  is  justified  in  this  life — is 
consigned  to  blessedness  by  an  irreversible  appointment,  and 
that,  consequently,  whensoever  he  dies,  it  is  certain  that  he 
enters  into  heaven.  The  moment  he  is  justified,  heaven  be- 
comes undoubtedly  his  portion  :  and  if,  therefore,  he  die  at 
the  instant  of  justification,  he  will  as  surely  obtain  immortali- 
ty, as  if  many  years  elapse  between  the  outputting  of  faith 
and  the  departure  from  life.  And  how  then  can  it  be  good 
for  him,  certified  as  he  thus  is  of  heaven,  to  continue  the 
war  with  sin  and  corruption,  and  to  cut  painfully  his  way 
through  hosts  of  opponents,  in  place  of  passing  instantane- 
ously into  the  joy  of  his  Lord  ?  If  you  could  prove  it  in  every 
case  indispensable  that  a  justified  man  should  undergo  dis- 
cipline, in  order  to  his  acquiring  meetness  for  heaven,  there 
would  be  no  room  for  debate  as  to  the  goodness  asserted  in 
our  text.  But  you  cannot  prove  the  discipline  indispensable, 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  213 

because  we  know  the  possibility  that  a  man  may  be  justi- 
fied at  the  last  moment  of  life ;  so  that,  no  time  having  been 
allowed  for  preparation,  he  may  spring  from  a  death-bed  to  a 
throne.  And  thus  the  question  comes  back  upon  us  in  its 
unbroken  force,  wherein  lies  the  goodness  of  hoping  and 
waiting  for  salvation? 

We  take  the  case,  for  example,  of  a  man  who,  at  the  age  of 
thirty,  is  enabled,  through  the  operations  of  grace,  to  look  in 
faith  to  the  Mediator.  By  this  looking  in  faith  the  man  is  jus- 
tified :  a  justified  man  cannot  perish :  and  if,  therefore,  the 
individual  died  at  thirty,  he  would  "  sleep  in  Jesus."  But, 
after  being  justified,  the  man  is  left  thirty  years  upon  earth — 
years  of  care,  and  toil,  and  striving  with  sin — and  during 
these  years  he  hopes  and  waits  for  salvation.  At  length  he 
obtains  salvation  ;  and  thus,  at  the  close  of  thirty  years,  takes 
possession  of  an  inheritance  to  which  his  title  was  clear  at 
the  beginning.  Now  wherein  can  lie  the  advantageousness 
of  this  arrangement?  Thirty  years,  which  might  have  been 
spent  in  the  enjoying,  are  spent  in  the  hoping  and  waiting 
for  salvation  :  and  unless  the  reality  shall  fall  short  of  the 
expectation,  how  can  it  be  true  that  "  it  is  good  that  a  man 
should  both  hope  and  quietly  wait  for  the  salvation  of  the 
Lord?"; 

We  think  that  no  fair  explanation  can  be  given  of  our  text, 
unless  you  bring  into  the  account  the  difference  in  the  por- 
tions to  be  assigned  hereafter  to  the  righteous.  If  you  sup- 
posed uniformity  in  the  glory  and  happiness  of  the  future, 
we  should  be  at  a  loss  to  discover  the  goodness  of  the  exist- 
ing arrangement.  If,  after  the  thirty  years  of  warfare  and 
toil,  the  man  receive  precisely  what  he  might  have  received 
at  the  outset  of  these  years,  is  he  benefited,  nay,  is  he  not  in- 
jured by  the  delay?  If  the  delay  afford  the  means  of  increas 
ing  the  blessedness,  there  is  a  clear  advantageousness  in  that 
delay.  But  if  the  blessedness  be  of  a  fixed  quantity,  so  that 
at  the  instant  of  justification  a  man's  portion  is  unalterably 
determined,  to  assert  it  good  that  he  should  hope  and  wait, 
is  to  assert  that  thirty  years  of  expectation  are  more  delight- 
ful than  thirty  years  of  possession. 


214  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

We  bring  before  you,  therefore,  as  a  comment  on  our  text, 
words  such  as  these  of  the  apostle,  "our  light  affliction, 
which  is  but  for  a  moment,  worketh  for  us  a  far  more  exceed- 
ing and  eternal  weight  of  glory."*  We  consider  that  when 
you  set  the  passages  in  juxta-position,  the  working-power, 
ascribed  by  one  to  affliction,  gives  satisfactory  account  of 
the  goodness  attributed  by  the  other  to  the  hoping  and  wait- 
ing. It  is  unquestionably  good  that  a  man  should  hope  and 
wait,  provided  the  delay  make  it  possible  that  he  heighten 
the  amount  of  finally-received  blessedness.  And  if  the  afflic- 
tion, for  example,  which  is  undergone  during  the  period  of 
delay,  work  out  "  a  far  more  exceeding  and  eternal  weight 
of  glory,"  it  follows  necessarily,  that  delay  makes  possible  the 
heightening  future  glory ;  and  therefore  it  follows,  just  as 
necessarily,  that  it  is  "  good  that  a  man  should  both  hope 
and  quietly  wait  for  the  salvation  of  the  Lord." 

We  consider  it  easy,  by  thus  bringing  into  the  account  an 
undoubted  doctrine  of  Scripture — the  doctrine  that  the  fu- 
ture allotments  of  the  righteous  shall  be  accurately  propor- 
tioned to  their  present  attainments — to  explain  the  goodness 
of  an  arrangement  which  defers,  through  many  years,  full 
deliverance  from  trial.  Wre  are  here,  in  every  sense,  on  a 
stage  of  probation  ;  so  that,  having  once  been  brought  back 
from  the  alienations  of  nature,  we  are  candidates  for  a  prize, 
and  wrestlers  for  a  diadem.  It  is  not  the  mere  entrance  into 
the  kingdom  for  which  we  contend :  the  first  instant  in 
which  we  act  faith  on  Christ  as  our  propitiation,  sees  this  en- 
trance secured  to  us  as  justified  beings.  But,  when  justified, 
there  is  opened  before  us  the  widest  field  for  a  righteous  am- 
bition ;  and  portions  deepening  in  majesty,  and  heightening 
in  brilliancy,  rise  on  our  vision,  and  animate  to  unwearied 
endeavor.  We  count  it  one  of  the  glorious  things  of  Christi- 
anity, that,  in  place  of  repressing,  it  gives  full  scope  to  all  the 
ardor  of  man's  spirit.  It  is  common  to  reckon  ambition 
amongst  vices  :  and  a  vice  it  is,  under  its  ordinary  develop- 
ments, with  which  Christianity  wages  interminable  warfare. 

+  2  Curinthians.  4  :  17. 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  215 

But,  nevertheless,  it  is  a  staunch,  and  an  adventurous,  and 
an  eagle-eyed  thing:  and  it  is  impossible  to  gaze  on  the  man 
of  ambition,  daunted  not  by  disaster,  wearied  not  by  repulse, 
disheartened  not  by  delay,  holding  on  in  one  unbroken  ca- 
reer of  effort  to  reach  a  coveted  object,  without  feeling  that 
he  possesses  the  elements  of  a  noble  constitution  ;  and  that, 
however  to  be  wept  over  for  the  prostitution  of  his  energies, 
for  the  pouring  out  this  mightiness  of  soul  on  the  corrupt 
and  the  perishable,  he  is  equipped  with  an  apparatus  of 
powers  which  need  nothing  but  the  being  rightly  directed,  in 
order  to  the  forming  the  very  finest  of  characters.  And  we 
think  it  nothing  better  than  a  libel  on  Christianity,  to  declare 
of  the  ambitious  man.  that,  if  he  become  religious,  he  must, 
in  every  sense,  cease  to  be  ambitious.  If  it  have  been  his 
ambition  to  rise  high  in  the  dignities  of  a  state,  to  win  to 
himself  the  plaudits  of  a  multitude,  to  twine  his  forehead 
with  the  wreaths  of  popular  favor,  to  be  foremost  amongst 
the  heroes  of  war  or  the  professors  of  science — the  introduc- 
ed humility  of  a  disciple  of  Christ,  bringing  him  down  from 
all  the  heights  of  carnal  ascendancy,  will  be  quite  incompati- 
ble with  this  his  ambition,  so  that  his  discipleship  may  be 
tested  by  its  suppression  and  destruction.  But  all  those  ele- 
ments of  character  which  went  to  the  making  up  this  ambi- 
tion— the  irrepressible  desire  of  some  imagined  good,  the 
fixedness  of  purpose,  the  strenuousness  of  exertion— these 
remain,  and  are  not  to  be  annihilated  ;  requiring  only  the 
proposition  of  a  holy  object,  and  they  will  instantly  be  con- 
centrated into  a  holy  ambition.  And  Christianity  propounds 
this  object.  Christianity  deals  with  ambition-as  a  passion  to 
be  abhorred  and  denounced,  whilst  urging  the  warrior  to 
carve  his  way  to  a  throne,  or  the  courtier  to  press  on  in  the 
path  of  preferment.  But  it  does  not  cast  out  the  elements  of 
the  passion.  Why  should  it  ?  They  are  the  noblest  which 
enter  into  the  human  composition,  bearing  most  vividly  the 
impress  of  man's  original  formation.  Christianity  seizes  on 
these  elements.  She  tells  her  subjects  that  the  rewards  of 
eternity,  though  all  purchased  by  Christ,  and  none  merited 
by  man,  shall  be  rigidly  proportioned  to  their  works.    She 


216  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

tells  them  that  there  are  places  of  dignity,  and  stations  of 
eminence,  and  crowns  with  more  jewelry,  and  sceptres 
with  more  sway,  in  that  glorious  empire  which  shall  finally 
he  set  up  by  the  Mediator.  And  she  bids  them  strive  for  the 
loftier  recompense.  She  would  not  have  them  contented  with 
the  lesser  portion,  though  infinitely  outdoing  human  imagi- 
nation as  well  as  human  desert.  And  if  ambition  be  the 
walking  with  the  staunch  step,  and  the  single  eye,  and  the 
untired  zeal,  and  all  in  pursuit  of  some  longed-for  superiori- 
ty, Christianity  saith  not  to  the  man  of  ambition,  lay  aside 
thine  ambition  :  Christianity  hath  need  of  the  staunch  step, 
and  the  single  eye,  and  the  untired  zeal ;  and  she,  therefore, 
sets  before  the  man  pyramid  rising  above  pyramid  in  glory, 
throne  above  throne,  palace  above  palace ;  and  she  sends 
him  forth  into  the  moral  arena  to  wrestle  for  the  loftiest, 
though  unworthy  of  the  lowest. 

We  shall  not  hesitate  to  argue  that  in  this,  as  in  other 
modes  which  might  be  indicated,  Christianity  provides  an 
antagonist  to  that  listlessness  which  a  feeling  of  security 
might  be  supposed  to  engender.  She  does  not  allow  the  be- 
liever to  imagine  every  thing  done,  when  a  title  to  the  king- 
dom has  been  obtained.  She  still  shows  him  that  the  trials  of 
the  last  great  assize  shall  proceed  most  accurately  on  the 
evidence  of  works.  There  is  no  swerving  in  the  Bible  from 
this  representation.  And  if  one  man  become  a  ruler  over  ten 
cities,  and  another  over  five,  and  another  over  two— each 
receiving  in  exact  proportion  to  his  improvement  of  talents — 
it  is  clear  as  demonstration  can  make  it,  that  our  strivings 
will  have  a  vast  influence  on  our  recompense,  and  that, 
though  no  iota  of  blessedness  shall  be  portioned  out  to  the 
righteous  which  is  not  altogether  an  undeserved  gift,  the  ar- 
rangements of  the  judgment  will  balance  most  nicely  what 
is  bestowed  and  what  is  performed.  It  shall  not  be  said,  that, 
because  secure  of  admission  into  heaven,  the  justified  man 
has  nothing  to  excite  him  to  toil.  He  is  to  wrestle  for  a  place 
amongst  spirits  of  chief  renown :  he  is  to  propose  to  himself 
a  station  close  to  the  throne :  he  is  to  fix  his  eye  on  a  reward 
sparkling  above  the  rest  with  the  splendors  of  eternity  :  and, 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  217 

whilst  bowed  to  the  dust  under  a  sense  of  utter  unworthiness 
to  enter  the  lists  in  so  noble  a  contest,  he  is  to  become  com- 
petitor for  the  richest  and  most  radiant  of  prizes.  We  tell 
him,  then,  that  it  is  good  that  he  hope  and  wait.  It  is  telling 
him  there  is  yet  time,  though  rapidly  diminishing,  for  secur- 
ing high  rank  in  the  kingdom.  It  is  telling  the  wrestler,  the 
glass  is  running  out,  and  there  is  a  garland  not  won.  It  is 
telling  the  warrior,  the  night  shades  are  gathering,  and  the 
victory  is  not  yet  complete.  It  is  telling  the  traveler,  the  sun 
is  declining,  and  there  are  higher  peaks  to  be  scaled.  Is  it 
not  good  that  I  hope  and  wait,  when  each  moment  may  add 
a  jewel  to  the  crown,  a  plume  to  the  wing,  a  city  to  the 
sceptre  1  Is  it  not  good,  when  each  second  of  effort  may  lift 
me  a  step  higher  in  the  scale  of  triumph  and  majesty?  Oh, 
you  look  on  an  individual  whose  faith  in  Christ  Jesus  has 
been  demonstrated  by  most  scriptural  evidence,  but  unto 
whom  life  is  one  long  series  of  trials,  and  disasters,  and  pains  ; 
and  you  are  disposed  to  ask,  seeing  there  can  rest  no  doubt 
on  the  man's  title  to  salvation,  whether  it  would  not  be  good 
for  him  to  be  freed  at  once  from  the  burden  of  the  flesh,  and 
thus  spared,  it  may  be,  yet  many  years  of  anxiety  and  strug- 
gle. You  think  that  he  may  well  take  as  his  own  the  words 
of  the  Psalmist :  "  Oh  that  I  had  wings  like  a  dove,  then 
would  I  flee  away  and  be  at  rest."  But  we  meet  you  with 
the  assertion  of  an  instituted  connection  between  our  two 
states  of  being.  We  tell  you  that  the  believer,  as  he  breasts 
the  storm,  and  plunges  into  the  war,  and  grapples  with  afflic- 
tion, is  simply  in  the  condition  of  one  who  contends  for  a 
prize  ;  aye,  and  that  if  he  were  taken  off  from  the  scene  of 
combat,  just  at  the  instant  of  challenging  the  adversary,  and 
thus  saved,  on  your  short-sighted  calculation,  a  superfluous 
outlay  of  toil  and  resistance,  he  would  miss  noble  things, 
and  things  of  loveliness,  in  his  everlasting  portion,  and  be 
brought  down  from  some  starry  eminence  in  the  sovereign- 
ties of  eternity,  which,  had  he  fought  through  a  long  life- 
time "  the  good  fight  of  faith,"*  might  have  been  awarded 
him  in  the  morning  of  the  first  resurrection. 

*  1  Timothy,  6  :  12. 
28 


218  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

Now  we  may  suppose  that  we  carry  with  us  your  admis- 
sion of  the  fairness  of  the  reasoning-,  that,  inasmuch  as  the 
continuance  of  the  justified  upon  earth  affords  them  oppor- 
tunity of  rising-  higher  in  the  scale  of  future  blessedness, 
there  is  a  goodness  in  the  arrangement  which  is  vastly  more 
than  a  counterpoise  to  all  the  evils  with  which  it  seems 
charged.  The  justified  man,  translated  at  the  instant  of  jus- 
tification, could  receive  nothing,  we  may  think,  but  the  lower 
and  less  splendid  portions.  He  would  have  had  no  time  for 
glorifying  God  in  the  active  duties  of  a  christian  profession  ; 
and  it  would  seem  impossible,  therefore,  that  he  should  win 
any  of  those  more  magnificent  allotments  which  shall  be 
given  to  the  foremost  of  Christ's  followers.  But  the  remain- 
ing in  the  flesh  after  justification,  allows  of  that  growth  in 
grace,  that  progress  in  holiness,  that  adorning  in  all  things 
the  doctrine  of  the  Savior,  to  which  shall  be  awarded,  at  the 
judgment,  chief  places  in  the  kingdom  of  Messiah.  And  if, 
on  the  supposition  that  no  period  intervene,  there  can  be  no 
augmentations  of  happiness,  whereas,  on  that  of  hoping  and 
waiting,  there  may  be  daily  advances  in  holiness,  and  there- 
fore daily  accessions  to  a  never-ending  bliss ;  who  will  deny 
the  accuracy  of  the  inference,  that  "  it  is  good  that  a  man 
should  both  hope  and  quietly  wait  lor  the  salvation  of  the 
Lord  r 

There  would  seem  nothing  wanting  to  the  eompletenesy 
of  this  argument,  unless  it  be  proof  of  what  has  been  all  along 
assumed,  namely,  that  the  being  compelled  to  hope  and  to 
wait  is  a  good  moral  discipline  :  so  that  the  exercises  prescrib- 
ed are  calculated  to  promote  holiness,  and,  therefore,  to  insure 
happiness.  We  have  perhaps  only  shown  the  advantageous- 
ness  of  delay  ;  whereas  the  text  asserts  the  advantageousness 
of  certain  acts  of  the  soul.  Yet  this  discrepancy  between  the 
thing  proved,  and  the  thing  to  be  proved,  is  too  slight  to  re- 
quire a  lengthened  correction.  It  is  the  delay  which  makes 
salvation  a  thing  of  hope ;  and  that  which  I  am  obliged  to 
hope  for,  I  am,  of  course,  obliged  to  wait  for ;  and  thus, 
whatever  of  beneficial  result  can  be  ascribed  to  the  delay 
may,  with  equal  fitness,  be  ascribed  to  the  hoping  and  wait- 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  219 

ingf.  Besides,  hope  and  patience— for  it  is  not  the  mere  wait- 
ing which  is  asserted  to  be  good ;  it  is  the  quietly  waiting; 
and  this  quiet  waiting  is  but  another  term  for  patience — 
hope  and  patience  are  two  of  the  most  admirable  of  christian 
graces,  and  he  who  cultivates  them  assiduously  cannot  well 
be  neglectful  of  the  rest.  So  that,  to  say  of  a  man  that  he  is 
exercising  hope  and  patience,  is  to  say  of  him,  that,  through 
the  assistance  of  God's  Spirit,  he  is  more  and  more  overcom- 
ing the  ruggcdness  and  oppositions  of  nature,  and  more  and 
more  improving  the  soil,  that  lovely  things,  and  things  of 
good  report,  may  spring  up  and  flourish.  In  the  material 
world,  there  is  a  wonderful  provision  against  the  destruction 
of  the  soil,  which  has  often  excited  the  admiration  of  philo- 
sophers. The  coat  of  vegetable  mould  with  which  this  globe 
is  overspread,  and  the  removal  of  which  would  be  the  cov- 
ering our  fields  with  sterility,  consists  of  loose  materials, 
easily  washed  away  by  the  rains,  and  continually  carried 
down  by  the  rivers  to  the  sea.  And,  nevertheless,  though 
there  is  this  rapid  and  ongoing  waste,  a  waste  which  seems 
sufficient,  of  itself,  to  destroy  in  a  few  years  the  soil,  there  is 
no  sensible  diminution  in  the  layers  of  mould ;  but  the  soil 
remains  the  same,  or  nearly  the  same,  in  quantity  ;  and  must 
have  done  so,  ever  since  this  earth  became  the  home  of  ani- 
mal or  vegetable  life.  And  we  know,  therefore,  that  there 
must  be  causes  at  work  which  continually  furnish  a  supply 
just  equal  to  the  waste  of  the  soil.  We  know  that  God,  won- 
derful in  his  forethought  and  contrivance,  must  have  arrang- 
ed a  system  of  mechanical  and  chemical  agencies,  through 
whose  operations  the  ravages  of  the  flood  and  storm  should 
be  carefully  repaired  :  and  we  find  accordingly,  that,  whilst 
the  soil  is  swept  away,  there  goes  on  continually,  through 
the  action  of  the  elements,  a  breaking  up  and  pounding  even 
of  the  hardest  rocks,  and  that  thus  there  is  strewed  upon  the 
earth's  surface  by  the  winds,  or  brought  down  in  the  sedi- 
ments of  mountain  torrents,  a  fresh  deposit  in  the  room  of  the 
displaced  and  far-scattered  covering. 

Now  it  is  only  necessary  to  allude  to  such  an  arrangement 
in  the  material  world,  and  you  summon  forth  the  admiration 


220  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

and  applause  of  contemplative  minds.  It  is  a  thing  so  sur- 
prising, that  the  waste  and  loss,  which  the  most  careless 
must  observe,  should  be  continually  and  exactly  repaired, 
though  by  agencies  whose  workings  we  can  scarcely  detect, 
that  the  bare  mention  of  the  fact  elicits,  on  all  sides,  a  con- 
fession, that  creative  wisdom  and  might  distance  immeasur- 
ably the  staunchest  of  our  searchings.  But  we  think  that, 
in  the  spiritual  economy,  we  have  something,  analogous  in- 
deed, but  still  more  beautiful  as  an  arrangement.  The  winds 
of  passion,  and  the  floods  of  temptation,  pass  fiercely  over  the 
soil  of  the  heart,  displacing  often  and  scattering  that  mould 
which  has  been  broken  up  by  the  ploughshare  of  the  Gos- 
pel. But  God's  promise  is,  that  he  will  not  suffer  believers 
"  to  be  tempted  above  that  they  are  able  :"*  and  thus,  though 
the  soil  for  a  while  be  disturbed,  it  is  not,  as  in  the  material 
system,  carried  altogether  away,  but  soon  resettles,  and  is 
again  fit  for  the  husbandman.  But  this  is  not  all.  Every 
overcome  temptation,  ministering,  as  it  must  do,  to  faith,  and 
hope,  and  patience,  is  virtually  an  assault  on  the  granite  of 
a  corrupt  nature,  and  helps  to  break  in  pieces  the  rock  of 
which  there  remains  much  in  the  breasts  of  the  most  pious. 
He  who  conquers  a  temptation  takes  a  fresh  step  towards 
subduing:  himself;  in  other  words,  detaches  more  particles 
from  the  stone  and  the  iron.  And  thus,  in  most  accurate 
correspondence,  as  in  the  natural  world  so  in  the  spiritual, 
the  tempest  and  torrent,  which  displace  the  soil,  provide  fresh 
material  for  all  the  purposes  of  vegetation  :  but  there  is  this 
difference  between  the  two  :  in  the  natural  world,  the  old 
soil  disappears,  and  its  place  is  supplied  by  the  new  ;  in  the 
spiritual,  the  old,  disturbed  for  a  while,  subsides,  and  is  then 
wondrously  deepened  by  accessions  of  new.  Hope  and  pa- 
tience, exercised  by  the  appointed  trials  of  life,  cause  an  en- 
richment of  the  soil  in  which  all  christian  graces  flourish; 
so  that  the  grain  of  mustard  seed,  bursting  into  a  tree,  finds 
ample  space  for  its  roots,  spreading  them  wide  and  striking 
them  deep.  And  if  this  be  no  exaggerated  account  of  the 
benefits  resulting  from  a  sedulous  exercise  of  hope  and  pa- 
*  1  Corinthians,  10  :  13. 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  221 

tience  ;  if  it  be  true  that  he  who,  in  the  scriptural  sense, 
hopes  and  quietly  waits  for  salvation,  is  under  that  discipline 
which,  of  all  others,  ministers  to  the  growth  of  dispositions 
acceptable  to  God  ;  we  have  omitted,  it  would  seem,  no  step 
in  the  required  demonstration,  but  have  collected  all  the  ele- 
ments of  proof,  that  "  it  is  good  that  a  man  should  both  hope 
and  quietly  wait  for  the  salvation  of  the  Lord." 

We  would  only  further  remark,  though  the  statement  is 
perhaps  involved  in  the  preceding,  that  the  delay  is  good  as 
affording  time  in  which  to  glorify  God.  It  is  a  spectacle 
which  should  stir  all  the  anxieties  and  sympathies  of  a  be- 
liever, that  of  a  world  which  has  been  ransomed  by  blood - 
shedding,  but  which,  nevertheless,  is  overspread  with  im- 
piety and  infidelity.  The  christian  is  the  man  of  loyalty 
and  uprightness,  forced  to  dwell  in  the  assemblings  of  trai- 
tors. With  a  heart  that  beats  true  to  the  king  of  the  land, 
he  must  tarry  amongst  those  who  have  thrown  off  allegiance. 
On  all  sides  he  must  hear  the  plottings  of  treason,  and  be- 
hold the  actings  of  rebellion.  Can  he  fail  to  be  wrought  up 
to  a  longing,  and  effort,  to  arrest,  in  some  degree,  the  march 
of  anarchy,  and  to  bring  beneath  the  sceptre  of  righteous- 
ness the  revolted  and  ruined  population  ?  Can  he  be  an  in- 
different and  cold-hearted  spectator  of  the  despite  done  to 
God  by  every  class  of  society  ;  and  shall  there  be  no  throb- 
bing of  spirit,  and  no  yearning  of  soul,  over  thousands  of 
his  race,  who,  though  redeemed  by  the  sacrifice  of  Christ, 
are  preparing  themselves  a  heritage  of  fire  and  shame  ?  We 
do  but  reason  from  the  most  invariable  and  well-known  prin- 
ciples of  our  nature,  when  we  argue  that,  as  a  loyal  and  lov- 
ing subject  of  Christ,  the  believer  must  glow  with  righteous 
indignation  at  the  bold  insults  offered  to  his  Lord,  and  long 
to  bend  every  faculty  and  power  to  the  diminishing  the 
world's  wretchedness  by  overcoming  its  rebellion.  What 
stronger  proof  then  can  you  ask  of  the  goodness  in  question 
than  that,  whilst  detained  from  glory,  we  may  withstand  im- 
piety? It  is  yet  a  little  while,  and  we  shall  be  withdrawn 
from  this  scene  of  rebellion  ;  and  no  further  effort,  so  far  as 
we  ourselves  are  concerned,  can  be  made  towards  advancing 


222  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

Christ's  kingdom.  Others  may  come  after  us,  of  warmer 
loyalty  and  more  resolute  zeal,  and  make  better  head  against 
the  tide  of  apostasy.  But  our  own  opportunities  of  vindica- 
ting Christ's  honor,  and  extending  the  sway  of  his  sceptre, 
will  have  altogether  passed  away  ;  and  the  last  glance  which 
our  spirits,  in  departing,  cast  upon  this  earth,  may  show  us 
impiety  careering  with  as  dominant  a  footstep  as  ever,  and 
send  us  into  God's  presence  with  a  throb  of  self-reproach  al 
the  paucity  and  poverty  of  our  resistances  to  the  might  of 
the  evil  one.  We  doubt  not,  that,  whatever  the  joy  and 
peace  of  a  christian's  deathbed,  there  will  be  always  a  feeling 
of  regret  that  so  little  has  been  done,  or  rather  so  little  at- 
tempted, for  Christ.  And  if,  whilst  his  firmament  is  glowing 
with  the  dawnings  of  eternity,  and  the  melody  of  angels  is 
just  stealing  on  his  ear,  and  the  walls  of  the  bright  city  are 
bounding  his  horizon,  one  wish  could  detain  him  in  the  ta- 
bernacle of  flesh  ;  oh,  it  would  not  be  the  wish  of  tarrying 
with  the  weeping  ones  who  are  clustered  at  his  bedside  ;  and 
it  would  not  be  that  of  providing  for  children,  of  superintend- 
ing their  education,  or  of  perfecting  some  plan  for  their  set- 
tlement in  life — he  knows  that  there  is  a  husband  of  the  wi- 
dow and  a  father  of  the  fatherless — and  the  only  wish  which 
could  put  a  check  on  his  spirit,  as  the  plumes  of  its  wing 
just  feel  the  free  air,  is  that  he  might  toil  a  little  longer  for 
Christ,  and  do  at  least  some  fractions  more  of  his  work,  ere 
ushered  into  the  light  of  his  presence.  And  if  the  sinking 
energies  were  suddenly  recruited,  so  that  the  pulse  of  the 
expiring  man  beat  again  vigorously  ;  it  might  at  first  seem 
painful  to  him  to  be  snatched  back  from  glory  ;  but  remem- 
bering, that,  whilst  vice  is  enthroned  on  the  high  places  of 
the  earth,  and  millions  bow  down  to  the  stock  and  the  stone, 
there  is  a  mighty  demand  for  all  the  strenuousness  of  the 
righteous,  he  would  use  returning  strength  in  uttering  the 
confession,  it  is  good  that  I  yet  hope  and  wait  for  salvation. 
Now  in  winding  up  this  subject  of  discourse,  we  have  only 
to  remark  that  religion  gives  a  character  to  hope  of  which 
otherwise  it  is  altogether  destitute.  You  will  scarcely  find 
the  man,  in  all  the  ranges  of  our  creation,  whose  bosom 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  223 

bounds  not  at  the  mention  of  hope.  What  is  hope  but  the 
solace  and  stay  of  those  whom  it  most  cheats  and  deludes ; 
whispering  of  health  to  the  sick  man,  and  of  better  days  to 
the  dejected  ;  the  fairy  name  on  which  young-  imaginations 
pour  forth  all  the  poetry  of  their  souls,  and  whose  syllables 
float,  like  aerial  music,  into  the  ear  of  frozen  and  paralyzed 
old  age  ?  In  the  long  catalogue  of  human  griefs  there  is 
scarce  one  of  so  crushing  a  pressure  that  hope  loses  its  elas- 
ticity, becoming  unable  to  soar,  and  bring  down  fresh  and 
fair  leaves  from  some  far-off  domain  which  itself  creates. 
And  yet,  whilst  hope  is  the  great  inciter  to  exertion,  and  the 
great  soother  of  wretchedness,  who  knows  not  that  it  ordina- 
rily deceives  mankind,  and  that,  though  it  crowd  the  future 
with  glorious  resting-places,  and  thus  tempt  us  to  bear  up  a 
while  against  accumulated  disasters,  its  palaces  and  gardens 
vanish  as  we  approach  ;  and  we  are  kept  from  despair  only 
because  the  pinnacles  and  forests  of  another  bright  scene 
fringe  the  horizon,  and  the  deceiver  finds  us  willing  to  be  yet 
again  deceived?  Hope  is  a  beautiful  meteor:  but,  neverthe- 
less, this  meteor,  like  the  rainbow,  is  not  only  lovely  because 
of  its  seven  rich  and  radiant  stripes  ;  it  is  the  memorial  of  a 
covenant  between  man  and  his  Maker,  telling  us  that  we 
are  born  for  immortality  ;  destined,  unless  we  sepulchre  our 
greatness,  to  the  highest  honor  and  noblest  happiness.  Hope 
proves  man  deathless.  It  is  the  struggle  of  the  soul,  breaking 
loose  from  what  is  perishable,  and  attesting  her  eternity.  And 
when  the  eye  of  the  mind  is  turned  upon  Christ,  "  delivered 
for  our  offences  and  raised  again  for  our  justification,"*  the 
unsubstantial  and  deceitful  character  is  taken  away  from 
hope  :  hope  is  one  of  the  prime  pieces  of  that  armor  of  proof 
in  which  the  believer  is  arrayed  ;  for  St.  Paul  bids  us  take 
"  for  an  helmet  the  hope  of  salvation. "t  It  is  not  good  that  a 
man  hope  for  wealth,  since  "  riches  profit  not  in  the  day  of 
wrath  :"$  and  it  is  not  good  that  he  hope  for  human  honors, 
since  the  mean  and  mighty  go  down  to  the  same  burial :  but 
it  is  good  that   he   hope  for   salvation  ;  the    meteor  then 

+  Romans,  4  :  25. 1  1  Thessalonians,  5:  S. 1  Proverbs,  11  :  4. 


224  THE    ADVANTAGES    OF 

gathers,  like  a  golden  halo,  round  his  head,  and,  as  he  presses 
forward  in  the  battle-time,  no  weapon  of  the  evil  one  can 
pierce  through  that  helmet. 

It  is  good,  then,  that  he  hope  :  it  is  good  also  that  he  qui- 
etly wait.  There  is  much  promised  in  Scripture  to  the  wail- 
ing upon  God.  Men  wish  an  immediate  answer  to  prayer, 
and  think  themselves  forgotten  unless  the  reply  be  instanta- 
neous. It  is  a  great  mistake.  The  delay  is  often  part,  and 
the  best  part,  of  the  answer.  It  exercises  faith,  and  hope,  and 
patience  ;  and  what  better  thing  can  be  done  for  us  than  the 
strengthening  those  graces  to  whose  growth  shall  be  propor- 
tioned the  splendors  of  our  immortality?  It  is  good,  then, 
that  ye  wait.  "  They  that  wait  upon  the  Lord  shall  renew 
their  strength  ;  they  shall  mount  up  with  wings  as  eagles  ; 
they  shall  run,  and  not  be  weary  ;  and  they  shall  walk,  and 
not  faint."*  And  ye  must,  according  to  the  phrase  of  our 
text,  wait  for  God.  "  The  Lord  is  a  God  of  judgment ;  bless- 
ed are  all  they  that  wait  for  Him."t  And  if  the  time  seem 
long,  and,  worn  down  with  affliction  and  wearied  with  toil, 
ye  feel  impatient  for  the  moment  of  full  emancipation— re- 
member ye — and  let  the  remembrance  check  every  mur- 
mur— that  God  leaves  you  upon  earth  in  order  that,  advanc- 
ing in  holiness,  you  may  secure  yourselves  a  higher  grade 
amongst  the  children  of  the  first  resurrection.  Strive  ye, 
therefore,  to  "  let  patience  have  her  perfect  work."}  It  is, 
'•'  yet  a  little  while,  and  he  that  shall  come  will  come."§  Be 
ye  not  disheartened  ;  for  "  the  night  is  far  spent,  the  day  is  at 
hand."!  As  yet  there  has  been  no  day  to  this  creation,  since 
rebellion  wove  the  sackcloth  into  the  overhead  canopy.  But 
the  day  comes  onward.  There  is  that  edge  of  gold  on  the 
snow-mountains  of  a  long-darkened  world,  which  marks  the 
ascending  of  the  sun  in  his  strength.  "  Watchman,  what  of 
the  night?  Watchman,  what  of  the  night?  The  watchman 
said,  the  morning  cometh  and  also  the  night."*lf  Strange  that 
morning  and  night  should  come  hand  in  hand.    But  the 

*  Isaiah,  40  :  31. 1  Ibid.  30  :  18. 1  James,   1  :  4. §  Hebrews,. 

10  :  37. II  Romans,  13  :  12. IT  Isaiah,  21  :  11,  12. 


A    STATE    OF    EXPECTATION.  225 

morning  to  the  righteous,  as  bringing  salvation,  shall  be  the 
night  to  the  wicked,  as  bringing  destruction.  On  then,  still 
on,  lest  the  morning  break,  ere  hoping  and  waiting  have 
wrought  their  intent.  Who  will  sleep,  when,  as  he  slumbers, 
bright  things  glide  by,  which,  if  wakeful,  he  might  have 
added  to  his  portion?  Who  will  put  off  the  armor,  when,  by 
stemming  the  battle-tide,  he  may  gather,  every  instant,  spoil 
and  trophies  for  eternity?  Who  will  tamper  with  carnal  in- 
dulgences, when,  for  the  poor  enjoyment  of  a  second,  he 
must  barter  some  everduring  privilege  ?  Wrestle,  strive,  fight, 
as  men  who  "  know  that  your  labor  is  not  in  vain  in  the 
Lord."*  Ye  cannot  indeed  merit  advancement.  What  is  call- 
ed reward  will  be  the  reward  of  nothing  but  God's  work 
within  you,  and,  therefore,  be  a  gift  most  royal  and  gratui- 
tous. But  whilst  there  is  the  strongest  instituted  connection 
between  attainment  here  and  enjoyment  hereafter,  we  need 
not  pause  upon  terms,  but  may  summon  you  to  holiness  by 
the  certainties  of  happiness.  The  Judge  of  mankind  cometh, 
bringing  with  him  rewards  all  wonderfully  glorious ;  but, 
nevertheless,  "  one  star  diftereth  from  another  star  in  glory."t 
O  God,  it  were  an  overwhelming  mercy,  and  a  magnificent 
portion,  if  we  should  obtain  the  least ;  but  since  thou  dost 
invite,  yea  command,  us  to  "  strive  for  masteries,"  we  will 
struggle — thy  grace  being  our  strength — for  the  higher  and 
more  beautiful. 

*  1  Corinthians,  15  :  58. 1 1  Corinthians,  15  :  41. 


29 


SERMON    XI. 


TRUTH  AS  IT  IS  IN  JESUS. 


"  But  ye  have  not  so  learned  Christ ;  if  so  be  that  ye  have  heard  him,  and 
have  been  taught  by  him,  as  the  truth  is  in  Jesus." — Ephesians,  4  :  20 
and  21st. 

There  is  a  singular  verse  in  the  Book  of  Ecelesiastes 
which  appears  directed  against  a  common,  though,  perhaps, 
unsuspected  error.  "  Say  not  thou  what  is  the  cause  that  the 
former  days  were  better  than  these  ?  for  thou  dost  not  in- 
quire wisely  concerning  this.';*  We  believe  that  there  exists 
a  disposition  in  persons,  and  especially  in  old  persons,  to  set 
present  years  in  contrast  with  the  past,  and  to  prove,  from 
the  comparison,  a  great  and  ongoing  deterioration  in  the 
character  of  mankind.  And  it  is  quite  certain,  that,  if  this 
disposition  were  observable  in  Solomon's  days,  as  well  as  in 
our  own,  it  must  pass  ordinarily  as  the  mark  of  a  jaundiced 
and  ill-judging  mind.  If  it  have  been  true  in  some  ages,  it 
cannot  have  been  in  all,  that  the  moral  aspect  of  the  times 
has  grown  gradually  darker.  We  must  be  warranted,  there- 
fore, in  ascribing  a  disposition  which  has  subsisted  through 
days  of  improvement,  as  well  as  of  declension,  to  a  peevish 
determination  to  find  fault,  and  not  to  a  sober  sitting  in  judg- 
ment upon  matters  of  fact. 

But  the  workings  of  the  very  same  disposition  may  be 
traced  under  other  and  less  obvious  forms.  We  believe,  for 
example,  that  men  are  often  inclined  to  compare  the  reli- 

*  Ecelesiastes,  7  :  10. 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS.  227 

gious  advantages  of  the  earlier  and  later  days  of  Christianity, 
and  to  uphold  the  superiority  of  the  past  to  the  present.  It  is 
imagined,  that  to  have  been  numbered  amongst  the  living 
when  Jesus  sojourned  upon  earth,  to  have  been  permitted  to 
behold  the  miracles  which  he  wrought,  and  to  hear  from  his 
own  lips  the  truths  of  redemption — it  is  imagined,  we  say, 
lhat  there  must  have  been  in  this  a  privilege  ampler  in  di- 
mensions than  any  which  falls  to  men  of  later  generations. 
And  from  such  imagining  there  will  spring  often  a  kind  of 
excusing,  whether  of  infidelity,  or  of  lukewarmness  ;  our  not 
believing  at  all,  or  our  believing  only  languidly,  being  ac- 
counted for  on  the  principle,  that  the  evidence  afforded  is  far 
less  than  might  have  been  vouchsafed.  Thus,  under  a  spe- 
cious, but  more  dangerous  aspect,  we  are  met  again  by  the 
question,  "  What  is  the  cause  that  the  former  days  were  bet- 
ter than  these  ?" 

Now  we  believe  the  question  to  be  grounded  altogether 
on  mistake.  If  there  be  advantage  on  one  side  as  contrasted 
with  the  other,  we  are  persuaded  that  it  lies  with  the  pre- 
sent generation,  and  not  with  the  past.  It  is  true  that  the  ex- 
hibition of  miraculous  energies,  which  was  made  in  the  cities 
of  Judea,  gave  what  ought  to  have  been  overwhelming  at- 
testation to  the  divinity  of  the  mission  of  Jesus.  If  we  pos- 
sessed not  the  records  of  history  to  assure  us  of  the  contrary, 
we  might  be  disposed  to  conclude,  with  much  appearance 
of  fairness,  that  they  who  beheld  diseases  scattered,  and  death 
mastered,  by  a  word,  must  have  instantly  followed  Him  who 
wrought  out  the  marvels.  Yet  we  may  easily  certify  our- 
selves, that  the  Jew  was  occupied  by  prejudices  which  must 
have  more  than  counterbalanced  his  peculiar  advantages. 
He  had  before  him,  so  to  speak,  a  sketch  of  his  Messiah, 
whose  accuracy  he  never  thought  of  questioning;  and  if  a 
claimant  of  the  Messiahship  presented  not  the  features  which 
were  foremost  in  this  sketch,  then,  almost  as  a  matter  of 
course,  his  pretensions  were  rejected  with  scorn.  It  is  no- 
thing to  say  that  ancient  prophecy,  more  thoroughly  inves- 
tigated, might  have  taught  the  Jew  the  error  of  expecting, 
on  the  first  advent  of  Messiah,  a  temporal  prince  and  deli- 


ZZQ  TRUTH    AS    IT    18    IN    JESUS. 

verer.  The  error  was  so  ingrained  into  his  spirit,  that  \l  was* 
easier  for  him  to  refer  miracles  to  the  power  of  the  evil  one, 
than  to  suspect  that  he  harbored  a  false  expectation.  So  that, 
when  we  compare  our  own  circumstances  with  those  of  the 
Jew,  it  behoves  us  to  remember,  that,  if  we  have  not  his  ad- 
vantages in  supernatural  manifestations,  neither  have  we  his 
disadvantages  in  national  prepossessions.  We  are  not  to 
argue  the  effect  produced  upon  him,  from  that  which  might 
now  be  produced  upon  us,  by  the  working  of  miracles.  In 
his  case  every  feeling  which  results  from  early  association, 
or  from  the  business  of  education,  was  enlisted  against  Chris- 
tianity ;  whereas  it  may  almost  be  affirmed,  that,  in  our  case. 
every  such  feeling  is  on  the  side  of  Christianity.  If,  therefore, 
we  allowed  that  the  testimony,  which  we  possess  to  the  truth 
of  our  religion,  wears  not  outwardly  the  same  mightiness  as 
that  afforded  in  the  days  of  the  Savior,  we  should  still  con- 
tend that  the  predisposing  circumstances  in  our  own  case 
far  more  than  compensate  the  sensible  witness  in  that  of 
the  Jew. 

We  may  yet  further  observe,  that  not  only  are  our  disad- 
vantages less,  but,  on  a  stricter  examination,  our  advantages 
will  appear  greater.  We  may  think  there  would  have  been 
a  vast  advantage  in  seeing  Jesus  work  miracles  ;  but,  after 
all,  we  could  only  have  believed  that  he  actually  worked 
them.  And  if  we  can  once  certify  ourselves  of  this  fact,  we 
occupy,  in  the  strictest  sense,  the  same  position  as  though 
we  had  been  spectators  of  the  wonder.  It  would  be  altogeth- 
er childish  to  maintain,  that  I  may  not  be  just  as  certain 
of  a  thing  which  I  have  not  seen,  as  of  another  which 
I  have  seen.  Who  is  in  any  degree  less  confident,  that 
there  was  once  such  a  king  as  Henry  the  Eighth  on  the 
throne  of  these  realms,  than  that  there  is  now  such  a  king 
as  William  the  Fourth  ?  Or  is  there  one  of  us  who  thinks 
that  he  would  have  felt  more  sure  of  there  having  been  such 
a  king  as  Henry  the  Eighth,  had  he  lived  in  the  times  of 
that  monarch  in  place  of  the  present  ?  We  hold  then  the 
supposition  to  be  indefensible,  that  the  spectator  of  a  miracle 
has  necessarily  an  advantage  over  those  who  only  hear  of 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS.  229 

that  miracle.  Let  there  be  clear  and  unequivocal  testimony 
to  the  fact  of  the  miracle  having  been  wrought,  and  the 
spectator  and  the  hearer  stand  well  nigh  on  a  par.  That 
there  should  be  belief  in  the  fact,  is  the  highest  result  which 
can,  in  either  case,  be  produced.  But  assuredly  this  result 
may  as  well  be  effected  by  the  power  of  authenticated  wit- 
ness, as  by  the  machinery  of  our  senses.  And,  without  ques- 
tion, the  testimony  to  the  truth  of  Christianity  is  of  so  grow- 
ing a  character,  and  each  age,  as  it  rolls  away,  pays  in  so 
large  a  contribution  to  the  evidences  of  faith,  that  it  were 
easy  to  prove,  that  the  men  of  the  present  generation  gain, 
rather  than  lose,  by  distance  from  the  first  ejection  of  the 
cross.  It  is  saying  but  little,  to  affirm  that  v£  have  as  good 
grounds  of  persuasion  that  Jesus  came  from  God,  as  we 
should  have  had,  if  permitted  to  behold  the  mighty  work- 
ings of  his  power.  We  are  bold  to  say  that  we  have  even 
better  grounds.  The  testimony  of  our  senses,  however 
convincing  for  the  moment,  is  of  so  fleeting  and  unsubstan- 
tial a  character,  that,  a  year  or  two  after  we  had  seen  a  mi- 
racle, we  might  be  brought  to  question  whether  there  had 
not  been  jugglery  in  the  worker,  or  credulity  in  ourselves. 
If  we  found  a  nation  up  in  arms,  maintaining  that  there 
might  have  been  magic  or  trickery,  but  that  there  had  not 
been  supernatural  power ;  we  might,  perchance,  be  easily 
borne  down  by  the  outcry,  if  the  remembered  witness  of  our 
eye-sight  were  all  to  which  appeal  could  be  made.  It  is 
not  difficult  to  begin  to  suspect  ourselves  in  the  wrong,  when 
we  find  no  one  willing  to  allow  us  in  the  right.  And  we 
therefore  maintain,  that,  living  as  we  do  in  a  day  when  ge- 
neration after  generation  has  sat  in  assize  on  Christianity; 
and  registered  a  verdict  that  it  has  God  for  its  author,  we 
possess  the  very  largest  advantages  over  those  who  saw  with 
their  own  eyes  what  Jesus  did,  and  heard  with  their  own 
ears  what  Jesus  said. 

Now  you  may  not  all  readily  perceive  the  connection  of 
these  remarks  with  the  passage  of  Scripture  on  which  we 
purpose  to  meditate.  Yet  the  connection  is  of  the  strictest. 
The  apostle  addresses  himself  to  converts,  who,  like  ourselves, 


230  TRUTH    AS    IX     IS    IN    JESUS. 

had  not  been  privileged  to  behold  the  Savior  of  mankind. 
Christ  Jesus  had  not  walked  the  streets  of  Ephesus  :  and  if 
it  be  supposable  that  certain  of  the  inhabitants  of  that  idola- 
trous city  had  visited  Judea  during  the  period  of  his  sojourn- 
ing on  earth,  it  is  incredible  that  the  Ephesian  church,  as  a 
body,  had  enjoyed  with  Him  personal  communion.  Does 
then  St.  Paul  address  the  Ephesians  as  though  disadvantaged 
by  this  circumstance  ?  Does  he  represent  them  as  less  fa- 
vored than  their  brethren  of  Jerusalem  who  had  lived  within 
the  circles  of  Christ's  ministrations?  On  the  contrary,  you 
would  judge,  from  the  style  of  his  address,  that  he  wrote  this 
Epistle  to  Jewish,  and  not  to  heathen  converts.  He  speaks 
to  the  Ephesians  of  their  having  heard  Christ,  and  of  their 
having  been  taught  by  Christ.  "  If  so  be  that  ye  have  heard 
him,  and  have  been  taught  by  him."  And  what  shall  we 
gather  from  this,  but  a  rigid  confirmation  of  our  foregoing 
remarks  ;  a  strengthening  of  the  opinion,  that  those  who  have 
not  seen  may  stand  in  precisely  the  same  position  as  those 
who  have  ;  and  that,  consequently,  the  absence  of  what  may 
be  called  sensible  proof  furnishes  no  groundwork  of  com- 
plaint, that  "  the  former  days  were  better  than  these  ?" 

We  must,  indeed,  allow  that  the  Ephesians  were  brought, 
more  nearly  than  ourselves,  into  personal  contact  with  Christ, 
because  instructed  by  teachers  who  had  seen  the  Savior  in 
the  flesh.  Yet  as  soon  as  testimony  ceases  to  be  the  testimony 
of  senses,  and  becomes  that  of  witnesses,  there  is  an  identifi- 
cation of  the  circumstances  of  men  of  former  times,  and  of 
latter.  Whether  the  testimony  be  transmitted  through  one,  or 
through  many  ;  whether  we  receive  it  from  those  who  them- 
selves saw  the  Savior,  or  from  those  who  have  taken  the 
facts  on  the  witness  of  others  ;  there  is  the  same  distinction 
between  such  testimony,  and  that  resulting  from  being  actual 
spectators,  or  actual  auditors :  and  it  might,  therefore,  be 
said  to  us,  as  well  as  to  the  Ephesians,  ye  have  heard  Christ, 
and  ye  have  been  taught  by  Christ. 

But  the  portion  of  our  text  on  which  we  would  fix  mainly 
your  attention  is  the  description  of  truth  as  made  known  by 
revelation.    The  teaching  whereof  the  Ephesians  had  been 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS.  231 

the  subjects,  and  which,  therefore,  we  are  bound  to  consider 
imparted  to  ourselves,  is  expressly  stated  to  be  "  as  the  truth 
is  in  Jesus."  Now  this  is  a  singular  definition  of  truth,  and 
well  worth  your  closest  attention.  We  hold  it  unquestionable, 
that,  long  ere  Christ  came  into  the  world,  much  of  truth,  yea, 
of  solid  and  illustrious  truth,  had  been  detected  by  the  un- 
aided searchings  of  mankind.  We  should  not  think  that  any 
advantage  were  gained  to  the  cause  of  revelation,  if  we  suc- 
ceeded in  demonstrating,  that,  over  the  whole  face  of  our 
planet,  with  the  lonely  exception  of  the  narrow  province  of 
Judea,  there  had  rested,  previously  to  the  birth  of  the  Re- 
deemer, a  darkness  altogether  impenetrable.  We  are  quite 
ready  to  allow,  that,  where  the  full  blaze  was  not  made  visi- 
ble, glimmerings  and  sparklings  were  caught ;  so  that,  if 
upon  no  point,  connected  with  futurity,  perfect  information 
were  obtained,  upon  many  points  a  degree  of  intelligence 
was  reached  which  should  not  be  overlooked  in  our  estimate 
of  heathenism.  We  think  it  right  to  assert,  under  certain  li- 
mitations, that  man,  whilst  left  to  himself,  dug  fragments  of 
truth  from  the  mighty  quarry ;  though  we  know  that  he  pos- 
sessed not  the  ability  of  fashioning  completely  the  statue,  nor 
even  of  combining  into  symmetry  the  detached  portions 
brought  up  by  his  oft-renewed  strivings.  We  do  not,  there- 
fore, suppose  it  implied  in  the  expression  of  our  text,  that. 
truth  was  unknown  amongst  men  until,  having  been  taught 
by  the  Redeemer,  it  might  be  designated  "  truth  as  it  is  in 
Jesus."  On  the  contrary,  we  are  persuaded  that  the  Ephe- 
sians,  however  shut  out  from  the  advantages  of  previous 
revelations,  possessed  many  elements  of  moral  truth  before 
Christ's  apostles  appeared  in  their  city.  Hence  the  definition 
of  our  text  implies  not,  that,  out  of  Jesus,  there  were  no  dis- 
coverable manifestations  of  truth  ;  but  rather,  that  truth, 
when  seen  in  and  through  Jesus,  assumes  new  and  distin- 
guishing features.  And  it  is  upon  this  fact  we  desire,  on  the 
present  occasion,  to  turn  the  main  of  your  attention.  We 
admit  that  certain  portions  of  Christ's  teaching  related  to 
truths  which  were  not  then,  for  the  first  time,  made  known 
to  mankind.  Other  portions  either  involved  new  disclosures. 


XoZ  TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS. 

or  brought  facts  into  notice  which  had  been  strangely  and 
fatally  overlooked.  But  whether  the  truth  were  new  or  old. 
the  circumstance  of  its  being  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus"  gave 
it  an  aspect,  and  a  character,  which  it  would  never  have  as- 
sumed, if  communicated  through  another  channel  than  the 
Mediator.  Such  we  hold  to  be  the  drift  of  the  expression.  It. 
becomes,  then,  our  business  to  endeavor  to  prove,  that  "truth, 
as  it  is  in  Jesus,"  puts  on  a  clothing,  or  a  coloring,  derived 
from  the  Redeemer  ;  so  that  if  you  separate  truth  from  him 
who  is  "  the  way,  the  truth,  and  the  life,"*  it  shall  seem 
practically  a  different  thing  from  itself  when  connected  with 
this  glorious  personage. 

Now  we  shall  take  truth  under  two  principal  divisions, 
and  compare  it  as  "  it  is  in  Jesus  "  with  what  it  is  out  of 
Jesus.  We  shall  refer,  first,  to  those  truths  which  have  to  do 
with  God's  nature  and  character ;  secondly,  to  those  which 
have  to  do  with  man's  condition.  There  may  be,  indeed, 
many  minor  departments  of  moral  truth.  But  we  think  that 
these  two  great  divisions  include  most,  if  not  all,  of  the  lesser. 

We  turn  then,  first,  to  the  truths  which  have  to  do  with  the 
nature  and  character  of  God.  We  begin  with  the  lowest  ele- 
ment of  truth ;  namely,  that  there  is  a  great  first  cause,  through 
whose  agency  hath  arisen  the  fair  and  costly  fabric  of  the 
visible  universe.  We  have  here  a  truth,  which,  under  some 
shape  or  another,  has  been  recognized  and  held  in  every  age. 
and  by  every  nation.  Barbarism  and  civilization  have  had 
to  do  with  peculiar  forms  and  modifications  of  this  truth. 
But  neither  the  rude  processes  of  the  one,  nor  the  attenuating 
of  the  other,  have  availed  to  produce  its  utter  banishment 
from  the  earth.  However  various  the  tribes  into  which  the 
human  race  hath  been  broken,  the  phenomenon  has  never 
existed  of  a  nation  of  atheists.  The  voyagers  who  have 
passed  over  waters  which  had  never  been  ploughed  by  the 
seaman,  and  lighted  upon  islands  whose  loneliness  had  shut 
them  out  from  the  knowledge  and  companionship  of  other 
districts  of  the  globe,  have  found  always,  amid  the  savage 

*  John,  14  :  G. 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS     IN    JESUS.  233 


great  in  his  power,  and  awful  in  his  vengeance.  We  cannot, 
therefore,  in  any  sense  maintain,  that  the  truth  of  the  exist- 
ence of  a  God  was  undiscovered  truth,  so  long  as  it  was  not 
"  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus/'  Christ  came  not  to  teach  what  na- 
tural, or  rather  traditional,  religion  was  capable  of  teaching ; 
though  he  gave  sanctions  to  its  lessons,  of  which,  heretofore, 
they  had  been  altogether  destitute.  But  take  the  truth  of  the 
existence  of  a  God  as  it  is  out  of  Jesus,  and  then  take  that 
truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus,  and  let  us  see  whether,  in  the  two 
cases,  the  same  truth  will  not  bear  very  different  aspects. 

We  know  it  to  be  said  of  Christ  by  St.  Paul,  that  he  was 
':  the  image  of  the  invisible  God."*  It  seems  to  us  that  the 
sense,  in  which  Christ  is  the  image,  is  akin  to  that  in  which 
he  is  the  word  of  the  Almighty.  What  speech  is  to  thought, 
that  is  the  incarnate  Son  to  the  invisible  Father.  Thought 
is  a  viewless  thing.  It  can  traverse  space,  and  run  to  and 
fro  through  creation,  and  pass  instantaneously  from  one  ex- 
treme of  the  scale  of  being  to  the  other ;  and,  all  the  while, 
there  is  no  power  in  my  fellow-men  to  discern  the  careerings 
of  this  mysterious  agent.  But  speech  is  manifested  thought. 
It  is  thought  embodied  ;  made  sensible,  and  palpable,  to  those 
who  could  not  apprehend  it  in  its  secret  and  silent  expatia- 
tions.  And  precisely  what  speech  thus  effects  in  regard  to 
thought,  the  incarnate  Son  effected  in  regard  to  the  invisible 
Father.  The  Son  is  the  manifested  Father,  and,  therefore, 
fitly  termed  "  the  Word  :"  the  relation  between  the  incarnate 
Son  and  the  Father  being  accurately  that  between  speech 
and  thought ;  the  one  exhibiting  and  setting  forth  the  other. 
It  is  in  somewhat  of  a  similar  sense  that  Christ  may  be 
termed  "  the  image  of  the  invisible  God."  "  God  is  a  Spirit."t 
Of  this  spirit  the  creation  is  every  where  full,  and  the  loneliest 
and  most  secluded  spot  is  occupied  by  its  presence.  Neverthe- 
less, we  can  discern  little  of  the  universal  goings-forth  of  this 
Deity.  There  are  works  above  us,  and  around  us,  which 
present  tokens  of  his  wisdom  and  supremacy.  But  these, 
after  all,  are  only  feeble  manifestations  of  his  more  illustrious 

*  Colossians,  1  :  15. +  John,  4  :  24 

30 


234  TRUTH    AS    IT    18    IN     JESUS. 

attributes.  Nay,  they  leave  those  attributes  well-nigh  wholly 
unrevealed.  I  cannot  learn  God's  holiness  from  the  stars  or 
the  mountains.  I  cannot  read  his  faithfulness  in  the  ocean 
or  the  cataract.  Even  his  wisdom,  and  power,  and  love,  are 
but  faintly  portrayed  in  the  torn  and  disjointed  fragments  of 
this  fallen  creation.  And  seeing,  therefore,  that  Deity,  invi- 
sible as  to  his  essence,  can  become  visible  as  to  his  attributes, 
only  through  some  direct  manifestation  not  found  in  his  ma- 
terial workmanship,  God  sent  his  well-beloved  Son  to  as- 
sume our  flesh  ;  and  this  Son,  exhibiting  in  and  through  his 
humanity  as  much  of  his  divine  properties  as  creatureship 
could  admit,  became  unto  mankind  "  the  image  of  the  invi- 
sible God."  He  did  not,  in  strict  matter-of-fact,  reveal  to 
mankind  that  there  is  a  God.  But  he  made  known  to  them, 
most  powerfully,  and  most  abundantly,  the  nature  and  attri- 
butes of  God.  The  beams  of  divinity,  passing  through  his 
humanity  as  through  a  softening  medium,  shone  upon  the 
earth  with  a  lustre  sufficiently  tempered  to  allow  of  their  ir- 
radiating, without  scorching  and  consuming.  And  they  who 
gazed  on  this  mysterious  person,  moving  in  his  purity,  and 
his  benevolence,  through  the  lines  of  a  depraved  and  scorn- 
ful population,  saw  not  indeed  God — "  for  no  man  hath 
seen  God  at  any  time,"*  and  spirit  must  necessarily  evade 
the  searchings  of  sense — but  they  saw  God  imaged  with  the 
most  thorough  fidelity,  and  his  every  property  embodied,  so 
far  as  the  immaterial  can  discover  itself  through  the  material. 
Now  we  think  you  can  scarcely  fail  to  perceive,  that  if  you 
detach  the  truth  of  the  being  of  a  God  from  Jesus,  and  if  you 
then  take  this  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus,"  the  difference  in  as- 
pect is  almost  a  difference  in  the  truth  itself.  Apart  from  re- 
velation, I  can  believe  that  there  is  a  God.  I  look  upon  the 
wonder-workings  by  which  I  am  encompassed  ;  and  I  must 
sacrifice  all  that  belongs  to  me  as  a  rational  creature,  if  I  es- 
pouse the  theory  that  chance  has  been  parent  to  the  splendid 
combinations.  But  what  can  be  more  vague,  what  more  in- 
definite, than  those  notions  of  Deity  which  reason,  at  the 

*  1  John,  -1  :  i'J. 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS.  235 

best,  is  capable  of  forming?  The  evil  which  is  mixed  with 
good  in  the  creation  ;  the  disordered  appearances  which  seem 
to  mark  the  absence  of  a  supreme  and  vigilant  government ; 
the  frequent  triumph  of  wickedness,  and  the  correspondent 
depression  of  virtue ;  these,  and  the  like  stern  and  undeniable 
mysteries,  will  perplex  me  in  every  attempt  to  master  satis- 
factorily the  Unity  of  Godhead.  But  let  me  regard  Jesus  as 
making  known  to  me  God,  and  straightway  there  succeeds 
a  calm  to  my  confused  and  unsettled  imaginings.  He  tells 
me  by  his  words,  and  shows  me  by  his  actions,  that  all  things 
are  at  the  disposal  of  one  eternal  and  inscrutable  Creator. 
Putting  forth  superhuman  ability  alike  in  the  bestowment  of 
what  is  good,  and  in  the  removal  of  what  is  evil,  he  furnishes 
me  with  the  strictest  demonstration  that  there  are  not  two 
principles  which  can  pretend  to  hold  sway  in  the  universe  ; 
but  that  God,  a  being  without  rival,  and  alone  in  his  majes- 
ties, created  whatsoever  is  good,  and  permitted  whatsoever 
is  evil. 

Thus  the  truth,  the  foundation  of  truth,  of  the  existence 
of  a  God,  takes  the  strength,  and  the  complexion,  of  health, 
only  in  the  degree  that  it  is  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus."  Men 
labored  and  struggled  hard  to  reach  the  doctrine  of  the  unity 
of  Godhead.  But  philosophy,  with  all  the  splendor  of  its  dis- 
coveries, could  never  banish  polytheism  from  the  earth.  It 
was  reserved  for  Christianity  to  establish  a  truth  which,  now, 
we  are  disposed  to  class  amongst  the  elements  of  even  na- 
tural theology.  And  when  you  contrast  the  belief  in  the  ex- 
istence of  Deity  which  obtained  generally  before  the  coming 
of  Christ,  with  that  established  wheresoever  the  Gospel  gains 
footing  as  a  communication  from  heaven ;  the  one,  a  belief 
in  many  gods :  the  other,  a  belief  in  one  God— the  first,  there- 
fore, a  belief  from  which  reason  herself  now  instinctively  re- 
coils :  the  second,  a  belief  which  carries  on  its  front  the  dig- 
nity and  beauty  of  a  sublime  moral  fact — why,  you  will  all 
quickly  admit  that  the  truth  of  the  existence  of  God,  as  it  is 
out  of  Jesus,  differs,  immeasurably,  from  that  same  truth, 
"as  it  is  in  Jesus :"  and  you  will  thus  grant  the  accuracy  of 
the  proposition  now  under  review,  namely,  that  truth  be- 


236  TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS. 

comes,  practically,  new  truth,  and  effective  truth,  by  being 
truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus." 

Now,  so  far  as  natural  theology  is  concerned,  we  derive, 
ordinarily,  the  truth  of  the  existence  of  God  from  the  curious 
and  mighty  workmanship  of  the  visible  creation.  We  con- 
clude that  a  great  intelligent  cause  must  have  spread  out  this 
panorama  of  grandeur,  and  loveliness,  and  contrivance.  But 
let  us  deal  with  the  truth,  that  God  built  the  worlds,  just  as 
with  the  other  truth  of  there  being  a  God.  Let  us  take  it  out 
of  Jesus,  and  then  let  us  take  it  in  Jesus. 

It  is  a  vast  deal  easier  for  the  mind  to  push  onward  into 
what  is  to  come,  than  backward  into  what  is  past.    Let  a 
thing  exist,  and  we  can,  in  a  certain  sense,  master  the  thought 
of  its  existence  being  indefinitely  continued.  But  if,  in  search- 
ing out  the  beginnings  of  its  existence,  we  can  find  no  pe- 
riod at  which  it  was  not,  then  presently  the  mind  is  con- 
founded, and  the  idea  is  too  vast  for  its  most  giant-like  grap- 
plings.  This  is  exactly  the  case  with  regard  to  the  Godhead. 
We  are  able,  comparatively  speaking,  to  take  in  the  truth, 
that  God  shall  never  cease  to  be.    But  we  have  no  capacity 
whatsoever  for  this  other  truth,  that  God  hath  always  been. 
I  could  go  back  a  thousand  ages,  or  a  million  ages,  aye,  or  a 
thousand  millions  of  ages  ;  and  though  the  mind  might  be 
wearied  with  traversing  so  vast  a  district  of  time,  yet  if  I 
then  reached  a  point  where  pausing  I  might  say,  here  Deity 
began,  here  Godhead  first  rose  into  being,  the  worn  spirit 
would  recruit  itself,  and  feel  that  the  end  compensated  the 
toil  of  the  journeying.    But  it  is  the  being  unable  to  assign 
any  beginning;  rather,  it  is  the  knowing  that  there  never 
was  beginning ;  this  it  is,  we  say,  which  hopelessly  distances 
every  finite  intelligence  ;  the  most  magnificent,  but  certainly, 
at  the  same  time,  the  most  overpowering  truth,  being  that 
He,  at  whose  word  the  universe  commenced,  knew  never 
himself  a  moment  of  commencement. 

Now  the  necessity  under  which  we  thus  lie  of  ascribing 
beginning  to  God's  works,  but  not  to  God  himself,  forces  on 
us  the  contemplation  of  a  period  when  no  worlds  had  started 
into  being ;  and  space,  in  its  infinite  circuits,  was  full  only  of 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS.  2o7 

the  Eternal  One.  And  then  comes  the  question,  as  to  the  de- 
sign and  purpose  of  Deity  in  peopling  with  systems  the  ma- 
jestic solitude,  and  surrounding  himself  with  various  orders 
of  creatures.  We  confess,  in  all  its  breadth,  the  truth  that 
God  made  the  worlds.  But  the  mind  passes  instantly  on  to 
the  inquiry,  why,  and  wherefore  did  He  make  them  7 

And  if  you  take  the  truth  of  the  creation  of  the  universe 
out  of  Jesus,  there  is  nothing  but  vague  answer  to  give  to 
such  inquky.  We  may  think  that  God's  benevolence  craved 
dependent  objects  over  which  it  might  pour  its  solicitudes. 
We  may  imagine  that  there  was  such  desire  of  companion- 
ship, even  in  Deity,  that  it  pleased  not  the  Creator  to  remain 
longer  alone.  But  we  must  not  forget,  that,  in  assigning 
such  reasons,  we  verge  to  the  error  of  supposing  a  void  in 
the  happiness  of  God,  the  filling-up  of  which  tasked  the  en- 
ergies of  his  Almightiness.  In  answering  a  question,  we  are 
bound  to  take  heed  that  we  originate  not  others  far  more 
difficult  of  solution. 

We  take  then  the  truth  of  the  creation,  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus/' 
and  we  will  see  whether  it  assume  not  very  different  features 
from  those  worn  by  it,  as  it  is  out  of  Jesus.  We  learn,  from 
the  testimony  of  St.  Paul,  that  "  all  things  were  created  by 
Christ,  and  for  Christ/'*  We  would  fix  attention  to  this  latter 
fact,  "  all  things  were  created  for  Christ."  We  gather  from 
this  fact  that  the  gorgeous  structure  of  materialism,  spreading 
interminably  above  us  and  around  us,  is  nothing  more  than 
an  august  temple,  reared  for  consecration  to  the  Mediator's 
glory.  "  All  things  were  created  for  Christ.*'  You  ask  me 
why  God  spangled  the  firmament  with  stars,  and  paved  with 
worlds  the  expansions  of  an  untravelled  immensity,  and 
poured  forth  the  rich  endowment  of  life  on  countless  myri- 
ads of  multiform  creatures.  And  I  tell  you,  that,  if  you  debar 
me  from  acquaintance  with  "  God  manifest  in  the  flesh,"f  I 
may  give  you  in  reply  some  brilliant  guess,  or  dazzling  con- 
jecture, but  nothing  that  will  commend  itself  to  thoughtful 
and  well-disciplined  minds.    But  the   instant    that  I   am 

♦  Colossians,  1  :  16. 1  1  Timothy,  3  :  1G. 


233  TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IS    JESUS. 

brought  into  contact  with  revelation,  and  can  associate  crea- 
tion with  Christ,  as  alike  its  author  and  object,  I  have  an  an- 
swer which  is  altogether  free  from  the  vagueness  of  specula- 
tion. I  can  tell  you  that  the  star  twinkles  not  on  the  mea- 
sureless expanse,  and  that  the  creature  moves  not  on  any  one 
of  those  worlds  whose  number  outruns  our  arithmetic,  which 
hath  not  been  created  for  the  manifestation  of  Christ's  glory, 
and  the  advancement  of  Christ's  purposes.  We  may  not  be 
able  to  define,  with  accuracy,  the  sublime  ends  which  shall 
yet  be  attained,  when  evil  is  expelled  from  this  long-defiled 
section  of  the  universe.  We  know  only,  that,  though  an  infi- 
del world  is  banishing  Christ  from  its  councils,  and  the  ranks 
of  the  blasphemer  are  leaguing  to  sweep  away  his  name,  and 
the  scoffers  are  insolently  asking  "  where  is  the  promise  of 
his  coming  ;"*  he  shall  descend  with  the  cloud  and  the  hurri- 
cane as  his  heraldry,  and,  circled  with  the  magnificent  stern- 
ness of  celestial  battle,  turn  the  theatre  of  his  humiliation 
into  the  theatre  of  his  triumphs.  Then — when  :'  the  spirits 
of  just  men  made  perfect  "t  shall  have  entered  into  the  raised 
and  glorified  bodies  ;  and  when  the  splendid  and  rejoicing 
multitude  shall  walk  forth  on  the  new  earth,  and  be  cano- 
pied with  the  new  heavens — Christ  shall  emphatically  "  see 
of  the  travail  of  his  soul  :"|  and  then,  from  every  field  of  im- 
mensity, crowded  with  admiring  spectators,  shall  there  roll 
in  the  ecstatic  acknowledgment,  "  worthy,  worthy,  worthy 
is  the  Lamb."  But,  without  descending  to  particulars,  we 
may  assert  it  unequivocally  proved  by  sundry  declarations  of 
the  Bible,  that  suns,  and  planets,  and  angels,  and  men,  the 
material  creation  with  its  walls,  and  domes,  and  columns,  and 
the  immaterial  with  its  train  upon  train  of  lofty  spirits — all 
these  constitute  one  vast  apparatus  for  effecting  a  mighty  en- 
thronement of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  And  if  you  recur  to  the 
work  of  contrast  in  which  we  are  engaged  ;  if  you  compare 
the  truth  of  creation  as  it  is  out  of  Jesus  with  that  same  truth 
as  it  is  in  Jesus ;  then,  when  you  observe  that,  in  the  one 
case,  the  mind  has  nothing  of  a  resting-place — that  it  can 

*  2  Peter.  3  :  4.— t  Hebrew?,  12  :  23.—  X  Isaiah,  53  :   11. 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS.  239 

only  wander  over  the  fields  which  God  hath  strewed  with 
his  wonders,  confounded  by  the  lustre  without  divining  the 
intention — whereas,  in  the  other,  each  star,  each  system, 
each  human,  each  celestial  being,  fills  some  place  in  a  me- 
chanism which  is  working  out  the  noble  result  of  the  coro- 
nation of  Christ  as  Lord  of  all ;  why,  we  feel  that  the  assent 
of  every  one  in  this  assembly  must  be  won  to  the  position, 
that  old  truth  becomes  wellnigh  new  truth  by  being  truth 
"  as  it  is  in  Jesus." 

But  we  wish  to  set  before  you  yet  simpler  illustrations  of 
the  matter  which  we  are  engaged  in  demonstrating.  The 
point  we  have  in  hand  is  the  showing  that  truths,  which  re- 
fer to  God's  character,  must  be  viewed  in  connection  with 
Jesus,  in  order  to  their  being  rightly  understood,  or  justly 
appreciated.  We  have  endeavored  to  substantiate  this,  so 
far  as  the  nature  and  works  of  the  Almighty  are  concerned. 
Let  us  turn,  however,  for  a  few  moments,  to  his  attributes, 
and  we  shall  find  our  position  greatly  corroborated. 

We  take,  for  example,  the  justice  of  God.  We  might  ob- 
tain, independently  on  the  scheme  of  redemption,  a  definite 
and  firm-built  persuasion,  that  God  is  a  just  God,  taking 
cognizance,  of  the  transgressions  of  his  creatures.  We  do 
not,  then,  so  refer  to  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  for  proof  of  God's 
justice,  as  though  no  proof  could  be  elsewhere  obtained. 
The  God  of  natural  religion  must  be  a  God  to  whom  sundry 
perfections  are  ascribed  ;  and  amongst  such  perfections  jus- 
tice will  find,  necessarily,  a  place.  But  we  argue  that  the 
demonstration  of  theory  will  never  commend  itself  to  men's 
minds  like  the  demonstration  of  practice.  There  might 
have  come  to  us  a  revelation  from  heaven,  ushered  in  with 
incontrovertible  witness  ;  and  this  revelation  might  have 
stated,  in  language  the  boldest  and  most  unqualified,  that 
God's  justice  could  overlook  no  iota  of  offence,  and  dispense 
with  no  tittle  of  punishment.  But,  had  we  been  left  without 
a  vivid  exhibition  of  the  workings  of  this  justice,  we  should 
perpetually  have  softened  down  the  statements  of  the  word, 
and  argued  that,  in  all  probability,  far  more  was  said  than 
ever  would  be  done.     We  should  have  reasoned  up  from 


240  TRUTH    AS    IT    IS     IN    JESUS. 

human  enactments  to  divine  ;  and,  finding  that  the  former 
are  oftentimes  far  larger  in  the  threatening  than  in  the  exac- 
tion, have  concluded  that  the  latter  might,  at  last,  exhibit 
the  like  inequality. 

Now  if  we  would  deliver  the  truth  of  God's  justice  from 
these  misapprehensions,  whether  wilful  or  accidental,  what 
process,  we  ask  of  you,  lies  at  our  disposal?  It  is  quite 
useless  to  try  abstract  reasoning.  The  mind  can  evade  it, 
and  the  heart  has  no  concern  with  it.  It  will  avail  nothing 
to  insist  on  the  literal  force  of  expressions.  The  whole  mis- 
chief lies  in  the  questioning  the  thorough  putting  into  effect ; 
in  the  doubting  whether  what  is  denounced  shall  be  point 
by  point  inflicted.  What  then  shall  we  do  with  this  truth  of 
God's  justice  ?  We  reply,  we  must  make  it  truth  "  as  it  is 
in  Jesus."  We  send  a  man  at  once  to  the  cross  of  Christ. 
We  bid  him  gaze  on  the  illustrious  and  mysterious  victim, 
stooping  beneath  the  amazing  burden  of  human  transgres- 
sion. We  ask  him  whether  he  think  there  was  remission 
of  penalty  on  behalf  of  Him,  who,  though  clothed  in  huma- 
nity, was  one  with  Deity ;  or  that  the  vials  of  wrath  were 
spoiled  of  any  of  their  scalding  drops,  ere  emptied  on  the 
surety  of  our  alienated  tribes  ?  We  ask  him  whether  the 
agonies  of  the  garden,  and  the  terrors  of  the  crucifixion, 
furnish  not  a  sufficient  and  thrilling  demonstration,  that 
God's  justice,  when  it  takes  in  hand  the  exaction  of  punish- 
ment, does  the  work  thoroughly ;  so  that  no  bolt  is  too  pon- 
derous to  be  driven  into  the  soul,  no  offence  too  minute  to  be 
set  down  in  the  reckoning'.2  And  if,  when  the  sword  of 
justice  awoke  against  the  fellow  of  the  Almighty,  it  returned 
not  to  the  scabbard  till  bathed  in  the  anguish  of  the  sufferer  ; 
and  if  God's  hatred  of  sin  be  so  intense  and  overwhelming 
a  thing,  that,  ere  transgressors  could  be  received  into  favor, 
the  Eternal  Son  interposed,  and  humbled  himself  so  that  an- 
gels drew  back  confounded,  and  endured  vicariously  such 
extremity  of  wretchedness  that  the  earth  reeled  at  the  spec- 
tacle, and  the  heavens  were  darkened  :  why,  shall  there,  or 
can  there,  be  harborage  of  the  deceitful  expectation,  that  if 
any  one  of  us,  the  sons  of  the  apostate,  rush  on  the  bosses  of 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS.  241 

the  buckler  of  the  Lord,  and  make  trial  for  himself  of  the 
justice  of  the  Almighty,  he  shall  not  find  that  justice  as  strict 
in  its  works  as  it  is  stern  in  its  words,  prepared  to  deal  out 
to  him,  unsparingly  and  unflinchingly,  the  fiery  portion 
whose  threatenings  glare  from  the  pages  of  Scripture?  So 
then  we  may  count  it  legitimate  to  maintain,  that  the  truth 
of  God  being  a  just  God  is  appreciated  truth,  and  effective 
truth,  only  in  the  degree  that  it  is  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus :" 
and  we  add,  consequently,  new  witness  to  the  fact,  that  the 
definition  of  our  text  describes  truth  accurately  under  its  in- 
fluential and  life-giving  forms. 

We  may  pursue  much  the  same  line  of  argument  in  re- 
ference to  the  truth  of  the  love  of  God.  We  may  confess, 
that  he  who  looks  not  at  this  attribute  through  the  person 
and  work  of  the  Mediator,  may  obtain  ideas  of  it  which  shall, 
in  certain  respects,  be  correct.  And  yet,  after  all,  it  would  be 
hard  to  prove  satisfactorily,  by  natural  theology,  that  "  God 
is  love.-'*  There  may  be  a  kind  of  poetical,  or  Arcadian  di- 
vinity, drawn  from  the  brightness  of  sunshine,  and  the  rich 
enamel  of  flowers,  and  the  deep  dark  blue  of  a  sleeping  lake. 
And,  taking  the  glowing  landscape  as  their  page  of  theology, 
men  may  sketch  to  themselves  God  unlimited  in  his  bene- 
volence. But  when  the  sunshine  is  succeeded  by  the  dark- 
ness, and  the  flowers  are  withered,  and  the  waters  wrought 
into  madness,  can  they  find  in  the  wrath  and  devastation 
that  assurance  of  God's  love  which  they  derived,  unhesitat- 
ingly, from  the  calm  and  the  beauty?  The  matter  of  fact  we 
hold  to  be,  that  Natural  Theology,  at  the  best,  is  a  system  of 
uncertainties,  a  balancing  of  opposites.  I  should  draw  dif- 
ferent conclusions  from  the  genial  breathings  of  one  day, 
and  the  desolating  simoom  of  the  next.  And  though  when  I 
had  thrown  me  down  on  an  alpine  summit,  and  looked  forth 
on  the  clusterings  of  the  grand  and  the  lovely,  canopied  with 
an  azure  that  was  full  of  glory ;  a  hope,  that  my  Creator 
loved  me,  might  have  been  gathered  from  scenery  teeming 
with  impresses  of  kindness,  and  apparently  sending  out  from 

*  John,  4  :  8. 
31 


242  TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESCS. 

waving  forests,  and  gushing  fountains,  and  smiling  villages, 
the  anthem  of  an  acknowledgment  that  God  is  infinitely  be- 
neficent ;  yet  if,  on  a  sudden,  there  passed  around  me  the 
rushings  of  the  hurricane,  and  there  came  up  from  the  val- 
lies  the  shrieks  of  an  affrighted  peasantry,  and  the  torrents 
went  down  in  their  strength,  sweeping  away  the  labor  of 
man's  hands,  and  the  corn  and  the  wood  which  had  crowned 
the  fields  as  a  diadem  ;  oh,  the  confidence  which  had  been 
given  me  by  an  exhibition  which  appeared  eloquent  of  the 
benevolence  of  Godhead,  would  yield  to  horror  and  trepida- 
tion, whilst  the  Eternal  One  seemed  walking  before  me,  the 
tempest  his  voice,  and  the  lightning  his  glance,  and  a  fierce 
devastation  in  his  every  footprint. 

But  even  allowing  the  idea  gained,  that  "  God  is  love," 
there  is  no  property  of  the  Creator  concerning  which  it  is 
easier  to  fall  into  mistake.  We  have  no  standard  by  which 
to  estimate  divine  affections,  unless  one  which  we  fashion 
out  of  the  results  of  the  workings  of  human.  And  we  know 
well  enough,  that,  amongst  ourselves,  an  intense  and  over- 
weening attachment  is  almost  sure  to  blind  man  to  the  faults 
of  its  object,  or  to  cause,  at  the  least,  that  when  the  faults  are 
discerned,  due  blame  is  withheld.  So  that,  whilst  we  have 
not  before  us  a  distinct  exhibition  of  God's  love,  we  may  fall 
naturally  into  the  error  of  ascribing  an  effeminate  tenderness 
to  the  Almighty,  and  reckon,  exactly  in  proportion  as  we 
judge  the  love  amazing,  that  it  will  never  permit  our  being 
given  over  to  torment.  Hence,  admittinof  it  to  be  truth,  yea, 
most  glorious  and  blessed  truth,  that  the  creature  is  loved 
by  the  Creator,  this  truth  must  be  viewed  through  a  rectify- 
ing medium,  which  shall  correct  the  distortions  which  a  de- 
praved nature  produces. 

Now  we  maintain  again  that  this  rectifying  medium  must 
be  the  person  and  work  of  the  Savior.  In  other  words,  we 
must  make  the  truth  of  God's  love,  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus," 
and  then,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  we  shall  know  how  am- 
ple is  the  love,  and  be  guarded  against  abusing  it.  When  we 
observe  that  God  loved  us  so  well  as  to  give  his  Son  to  death 
for  us,  we  perceive  that  the  immenseness  of  this  love  leaves 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JEStTS.  243 

imagination  far  behind  in  her  least-fettered  soarings.  But 
when  we  also  observe  that  love,  so  unheard-of,  could  not  ad- 
vance straight  to  the  rescue  of  its  objects,  but  must  wait,  ere  it 
could  breathe  words  of  forgiveness  to  the  fallen,  the  outwork- 
ings  of  a  task  of  ignominy  and  blood  ;  there  must  vanish,  at 
once,  the  idle  expectancy  of  a  tenderness  not  proof  against  the 
cry  of  despair,  and  we  must  learn  (unless  we  wilfully  close  the 
mind  against  conviction)  that  the  love  of  a  holy,  and  righ- 
teous, and  immutable  Being  is  that  amazing  principle,  which 
can  stir  the  universe  in  our  behalf  during  the  season  of  grace, 
and  yet,  as  soon  as  that  season  have  terminated,  resign  us 
unhesitatingly  to  the  ministry  of  vengeance.  Thus,  take  the 
truth  of  God's  love  out  of  Jesus,  and  you  will  dress  up  a 
weak  and  womauish  sympathy,  which  cannot  permit  the 
punishment  of  the  disobedient.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  take 
this  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus,"  and  you  have  the  love  immea- 
surable in  its  stature,  but  uncompromising  in  its  penalties ; 
eager  to  deliver  the  meanest  who  repents,  yet  nerved  to  aban- 
don the  thousands  who  die  hardened  ;  threatening,  therefore, 
the  obdurate  in  the  very  degree  that  it  encourages  the  peni- 
tent: and  when  you  thus  contrast  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus," 
with  truth  as  it  is  out  of  Jesus,  you  will  more  and  more  re- 
cognize the  power  and  the  worth  of  the  expression,  that  the 
Ephesians  had  been  taught  "  as  the  truth  is  in  Jesus." 

We  might  employ  this  kind  of  illustration  in  regard  to 
other  attributes  of  God.  We  might  show  you  that  correct  and 
practical  views  of  the  truths  of  God's  faithfulness,  God's  ho- 
liness, God's  wisdom,  are  only  to  be  derived  from  the  work 
of  redemption ;  and  this  would  be  showing  you  that  truth 
must  be  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus,"  if  we  would  acquaint  our- 
selves with  the  character  of  God.  But  we  wave  the  further 
prosecution  of  our  first  head  of  discourse,  and  ask  attention 
to  a  few  remarks  which  have  to  do  with  the  second. 

We  divided  truth  into  two  great  departments  ;  truth  which 
relates  to  the  character  of  God,  truth  which  relates  to  the 
condition  of  man.  We  proceed,  therefore,  to  affirm,  in  re- 
ference to  the  condition  of  man,  that  truth,  if  rightly  un- 
derstood, or  thoroughly  influential,  must  be  truth  "  as  it 


244  TRUTH    AS    II     IS    IN    JESUS. 

is  in  Jesus."  We  find  it  admitted,  for  example,  m  most 
quarters,  that  man  is  a  fallen  being,  with  faculties  weakened? 
if  not  wholly  incapacitated  for  moral  achievement.  Yet  this 
general  admission  is  one  of  the  most  heartless,  and  unmean- 
ing things  in  the  world.  It  consists  with  the  harboring  pride 
and  conceit.  It  tolerates  many  forms  and  actings  of  self-right- 
eousness. And  the  matter-of-fact  is,  that  man's  moral  disabi- 
lity is  not  to  be  described,  and  not  understood  theoretically. 
We  want  some  bold,  definite,  and  tangible  measurements. 
But  we  shall  find  these  only  in  the  work  of  Christ  Jesus.  I 
learn  the  depth  to  which  I  have  sunk,  from  the  length  of  the 
chain  let  down  to  updraw  me.  I  ascertain  the  mightiness  of 
the  ruin  by  examining  the  machinery  of  restoration.  I  gather 
that  I  must  be,  in  the  broadest  sense,  unable  to  effect  deliver- 
ance for  myself,  from  observing  that  none  less  than  the  Son 
of  the  Highest  had  strength  enough  to  fight  the  battles  of  our 
race.  Thus  the  truth  of  human  apostasy,  of  human  corrup- 
tion, of  human  helplessness— how  shall  this  be  understood 
truth  and  effective  ?  We  answer,  simply  through  being  truth 
"  as  it  is  in  Jesus."  In  the  history  of  the  Incarnation  and  Cru- 
cifixion we  read,  in  characters  not  to  be  misinterpreted,  the 
announcements,  that  man  has  destroyed  himself,  and  that, 
whatever  his  original  powers,  he  is  now  void  of  ability  to 
turn  unto  God,  and  do  things  well-pleasing  in  his  sight.  You 
do  not,  indeed,  alter  these  truths,  if  you  destroy  all  knowledge 
of  the  Incarnation  and  Crucifixion.  But  you  remove  their 
massive  and  resistless  exhibition,  and  leave  us  to  our  own 
vague  and  partial  computations.  We  have  nothing  practical 
to  which  to  appeal,  nothing  fixed  by  which  always  to  esti- 
mate. Thus,  in  spite  of  a  seeming  recognition  of  truth,  wc 
shall  be  turned  adrift  on  a  wide  sea  of  ignorance  and  self- 
sufficiency  ;  and  all  because  truth  may  be  to  us  truth  as  it  is 
in  moral  philosophy,  truth  as  it  is  in  well-arranged  ethics, 
truth  as  it  is  in  lucid  and  incontrovertible  statements;  and 
yet  prove  nothing  but  despised,  and  ill-understood,  and  pow- 
erless truth,  as  not  being  to  us  truth  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus." 

We  add  that  the  law  of  God,  which  has  been  given  for 
the  regulation  of  our  conduct,  is  a  wonderful  compendium 


TKU1H    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS.  245 

of  truth.  There  is  not  a  single  working  oi*  wickedness, 
though  it  be  the  lightest  and  most  secret,  which  escapes  the 
denouncements  of  this  law  ;  so  that  the  statute-book  proves 
itself  truth  by  delineating,  with  an  unvarying  accuracy,  the 
whole  service  of  the  father  of  lies.  But  who  knows  any 
thing  of  this  truth,  unless  acquainted  with  the  law  as  ex- 
pounded and  fulfilled  by  Christ  ?  Christ  in  his  discourses 
expanded  every  precept,  and  in  his  obedience  exhibited 
every  demand.  He,  therefore,  who  would  know  the  truth 
which  there  is  in  the  law,  must  know  this  truth,  "  as  it  is  in 
Jesus."  He,  moreover,  who  would  not  be  appalled  by  this 
truth,  must  view  it  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus."  Knowledge  of  the 
law  would  crush  a  man,  if  unaccompanied  by  the  conscious- 
ness that  Christ  obeyed  the  law  in  his  stead.  So  that  truth 
':  as  it  is  in  Jesus,"  this  is  knowledge,  and  this  is  comfort. 
And  finally — for  we  must  hurry  over  ground  where  there  is 
much  which  might  tempt  us  to  linger — look  at  the  context 
of  the  words  under  review,  and  you  will  find  that  truth,  "as 
it  is  in  Jesus,"  differs  from  that  truth,  as  it  is  out  of  Jesus,  in 
being  a  sanctifying  thing.  The  Ephesians  were  u  taught 
as  the  truth  is  in  Jesus,"  to  "  put  off",  concerning  the  former 
conversation,  the  old  man,  which  is  corrupt  according  to  the 
deceitful  lusts."  Hence — and  this  after  all  is  the  grand  dis- 
tinction— truth,  "  as  it  is  in  Jesus,"  is  a  thing  of  the  heart ; 
whereas  truth,  as  it  is  out  of  Jesus,  is  a  thing  of  the  head. 
Dear  Brethren,  ye  cannot  be  too  often  told  that  without  ho- 
liness "  no  man  shall  see  the  Lord."*  If  no  vigorous  process 
of  sanctification  be  going  on  within,  we  are  destitute  of  the 
organs  by  which  to  read  truth  in  the  holy  child  Jesus.  Or, 
rather,  we  are  ignorant  of  the  characters  in  which  truth  is 
graven  on  the  Savior  :  and  therefore,  though  we  may  read 
it  in  books  and  manuscripts,  on  the  glorious  scroll  of  the 
heavens,  and  in  the  beautiful  tracery  of  forest  and  mountain, 
we  can  never  peruse  it  as  written  in  the  person  and  work  of 
God's  only  and  well-beloved  Son.  The  mortification  of  the 
flesh — the  keeping  under  the  body — the  plucking  out  the 

*  Hebrews,  12  :  14. 


2*«  TROTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JKSD$. 

offending  right  eye—the  cutting  off  the  offending  right  hand 
—these,  so  to  speak,  are  the  processes  of  tuition  by  which  men 
are  taught  «  as  the  truth  is  in  Jesus."  Sanctification  con- 
ducts to  knowledge,  and  then  knowledge  speeds  the  work 
of  sanctification. 

We  beseech  you,  therefore,  that  ye  strive,  through  God's 
grace,  to  give  yourselves  to  the  business  of  putting  off  the 
old  man.     Will  ye  affirm  that  ye  believe  there  is  a  heaven, 
and  yet  act  as  though  persuaded  that  it  is  not  worth  striving 
for  ?     Believe,  only  believe,  that  a  day  of  coronation  is  yet 
to  break  on  this  long-darkened  globe,  and  the  sinews  will 
be  strung,  like  those  of  the  wrestlers  of  old,  who  saw  the 
garlands  in  the  judges  hands,  and  locked  themselves  in  an 
iron  embrace.     Strive— for  the  grasp  of  a  destroyer  is  upon 
you,  and  if  ye  be  not  wrenched  away,  it  will  palsy  you,  and 
crush  you.     Strive— for  the  foe  is  on  the  right  hand,  on  the. 
left  hand,  before  you,  behind  you  ;  and  ye  must  be  trampled 
under  foot,  if  ye  struggle  not,  and  strike  not,  as  those  who 
feel  themselves  bound  in  a  death-grapple.     Strive— there  is 
a  crown  to  be  won— the  mines  of  the  earth  have  not  fur- 
nished its  metal,  and  the  depths  of  the  sea  hide  nothing  so 
radiant  as  the  jewels  with  which  it  is  wreathed.     Strive— 
for  if  ye  gain  not  this  crown— alas  !  alas  !  ye  must  have  the 
scorpions  for  ever  round  the  forehead,  and  the  circles  of  that 
flame  which  is  fanned  by  the  breath  of  the  Almighty's  dis- 
pleasure. 

Strive  then,  but  strive  in  the  strength  of  your  risen  Lord, 
and  not  in  your  own.  Ye  know  not  how  soon  that  Lord  may 
come.  Whilst  the  sun  walks  his  usual  path  on  the  firma- 
ment, and  the  grass  is  springing  in  our  fields,  and  merchants 
are  crowding  the  exchange,  and  politicians  jostling  for  place, 
and  the  voluptuous  killing  time,  and  the  avaricious  counting 
gold,  »  the  sign  of  the  Son  of  Man"*  shall  be  seen  in  the 
heavens,  and  the  august  throne  of  fire  and  of  cloud  be  piled 
for  judgment.  Be  ye  then  persuaded.  If  not  persuaded,  be  ye 
alarmed.  There  is  truth  in  Jesus  which  is  terrible,  as  well  as 

*  Matthew,  24  :  30. 


TRUTH    AS    IT    IS    IN    JESUS.  247 

truth  which  is  soothing  :  terrible,  for  he  shall  be  Judge  as 
well  as  Savior  ;  and  ye  cannot  face  Him,  ye  cannot  stand 
before  Him,  unless  ye  now  give  ear  to  his  invitation,  "  Come 
unto  me,  all  ye  that  labor  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will 
give  you  rest."* 

♦  Matthew,  11  :  28. 


SERMON    XTT. 


THE  DIFFICULTIES  OF  SCRIPTURE. 


"  In  which  are  some  things  hard  to  be  understood,  which  they  that  are 
unlearned  and  unstable  wrest,  as  they  do  also  the  other  Scriptures,  unto 
their  own  destruction." — 2  Peter,  3  :  16. 

The  writings  of  St.  Paul,  occupying,  as  they  do,  a  large 
portion  of  the  New  Testament,  treat  much  of  the  sublimer 
and  more  difficult  articles  of  Christianity.  It  is  undeniable 
that  there  is  a  great  deal  made  known  to  us  by  the  Epistles, 
which  could  only  imperfectly,  if  at  all,  be  derived  from  the 
Gospels.  We  have  the  testimony  of  Christ  himself  that  he 
had  many  things  to  say  to  his  disciples,  which,  whilst  he  yet 
ministered  on  earth,  they  were  not  prepared  to  receive. 
Hence  it  was  altogether  to  be  expected  that  the  New  Testa- 
ment would  be,  what  we  find  it,  a  progressive  book  ;  the 
communications  of  intelligence  growing  with  the  fuller 
opening  out  of  the  dispensation.  The  deep  things  of  the 
Sovereignty  of  God  ;  the  mode  of  the  justification  of  sinners, 
and  its  perfect  consistence  with  all  the  attributes  of  the  Crea- 
tor ;  the  mysteries  bound  up  in  the  rejection  of  the  Jew  and 
the  calling  of  the  Gentile  ;  these  enter  largely  into  the  Epis- 
tles of  St.  Paul,  though  only  faintly  intimated  by  writers 
who  precede  him  in  the  canon  of  Scripture.  And  it  is  a 
natural  and  unavoidable  consequence  on  the  greater  ab- 
struseness  of  the  topics  which  are  handled,  that  the  apostle's 
writings  should  present  greater  difficulties  to  the  Biblical 
student.  With  the  exception  of  the  Book  of  Revelation, 
which,  a?  dealing  with  the  future,  is  necessarily  hard  to  be 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  249 

interpreted,  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  is  probably  that  part 
of  the  New  Testament  which  most  demands  the  labors  of 
the  commentator.  And  though  we  select  this  epistle  as  pre- 
eminent in  difficulties,  we  may  say  generally  of  the  writings 
of  St.  Paul,  that,  whilst  they  present  simple  and.  beautiful 
truths  which  all  may  understand,  they  contain  statements  of 
doctrine,  which,  even  after  long  study  and  prayer,  will  be 
but  partially  unfolded  by  the  most  gifted  inquirers.  With 
this  admission  of  difficulty  we  must  join  the  likelihood  of 
misconception  and  misapplication.  Where  there  is  confess- 
edly obscurity,  we  may  naturally  expect  that  wrong  theories 
will  be  formed,  and  erroneous  inferences  deduced.  If  it  be 
hard  to  determine  the  true  meaning  of  a  passage,  it  can 
scarcely  fail  that  some  false  interpretation  will  be  advanced, 
or  espoused,  by  the  partisans  of  theological  systems.  If  a  man 
have  error  to  maintain,  he  will  turn  for  support  to  passages 
of  Scripture,  of  which,  the  real  sense  being  doubtful,  a  plau- 
sible may  be  advanced  on  the  side  of  his  falsehood.  If,  again, 
an  individual  wish  to  persuade  himself  to  believe  tenets 
which  encourage  him  in  presumption  and  unholiness,  he 
may  easily  fasten  on  separate  verses,  which,  taken  by  them- 
selves, and  without  concern  for  the  analogy  of  faith,  seem  to 
mark  out  privileges  superseding  the  necessity  of  striving 
against  sin.  So  that  we  can  find  no  cause  of  surprise  in  the 
fact,  that  St.  Peter  should  speak  of  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul 
as  wrested  by  the  "  unlearned  and  unstable"  to  their  own 
destruction.  He  admits  that  in  these  Epistles  "  are  some 
things  hard  to  be  understood."  And  we  consider  it,  as  we 
have  just  explained,  a  necessary  consequence  on  the  difficul- 
ties, that  there  should  be  perversions,  whether  wilful  or  un- 
intentional, of  the  writings. 

But  you  will  observe,  that,  whilst  St.  Peter  confesses  both 
the  difficulty  and  the  attendant  danger,  he  gives  not  the 
slightest  intimation  that  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  were  unsuit- 
ed  to  general  perusal.  The  Roman  Catholic,  when  support- 
ing that  tenet  of  his  church  which  shuts  up  the  Bible  from 
the  laity,  will  appeal  confidently  to  this  statement  of  St.  Pe- 
ter, arguing  that  the  allowed  difficulty,  and  the  declared 
32 


250  the  Difficulties  oi   scripture. 

danger,  give  the  Apostle's  authority  to  the  measure  of  exclu- 
sion. But  certainly  it  were  not  easy  to  find  a  more  strained 
and  far-fetched  defence.  Had  St.  Peter  intended  to  infer,  that, 
because  obscurity  and  abuse  existed,  there  ought  to  be  pro- 
hibition, it  is  altogether  unaccountable  that  he  did  not  lay 
down  the  inference.  A  fairer  opportunity  could  never  be  pre- 
sented for  the  announcement  of  such  a  rule  as  the  Roman 
Catholic  advocates.  And  the  mere  finding,  that,  when  an  in- 
spired writer  speaks  of  the  dangers  of  perusal,  he  gives  not 
even  a  hint  which  can  be  tortured  into  sanction  of  its  pro- 
hibition, is,  in  itself,  so  overpowering  a  witness  to  the  right 
of  all  men  to  read  the  Bible  for  themselves,  that  we  wonder 
at  the  infatuation  of  those  who  can  appeal  to  the  passage  as 
supporting  a  counter-opinion.  You  will  observe  that  whilst 
St.  Peter  speaks  only  of  the  writings  of  St.  Paul  as  present- 
ing '•  things  hard  to  be  understood,"  he  extends  to  the  whole 
Bible  the  wresting  of  the  unlearned  and  unstable.  So  that, 
when  there  is  wanting  that  chastened,  and  teachable,  and 
prayerful  disposition,  which  should  always  be  brought  to  the 
study  of  Scripture,  the  plainest  passages  and  the  most  ob- 
scure may  be  equally  abused.  After  all,  it  is  not  so  much  the 
difficulty  which  makes  the  danger,  as  the  temper  in  which 
the  Bible  is  perused.  And  if  St.  Peter's  statement  prove  any 
thing,  it  proves  that  selections  from  Holy  Writ,  such  as  the 
papist  will  allow,  are  to  the  full  as  fraught  with  peril  as  the 
unmutilated  volume  ;  and  that,  therefore,  unless  a  man  is  to 
read  all,  he  ought  not  to  read  a  line.  We  cannot  but  admire 
the  maimer  in  which  the  apostle  has  expressed  himself.  If 
he  had  specified  difficulties ;  if  he  had  stated  that  it  was  upon 
such  or  such  points  that  St.  Paul's  Epistles,  or  the  Scriptures 
in  general,  were  obscure ;  those  who  are  disposed  to  give 
part,  and  to  keep  back  part,  might  have  had  a  ground  for 
their  decision,  and  a  rule  for  their  selection.  But  since  we 
have  nothing  but  a  round  assertion  that  all  the  Scriptures 
may  be,  and  are,  wrested  by  the  unlearned  and  unstable, 
there  is  left  us  no  right  of  determining  what  is  fit  for  perusal 
and  what  is  not  fit;  so  that,  in  allowing  a  solitary  verse  to 
be  read,  we  run  the  same  risk  as  in  allowing  every  chapter 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  251 

from  the  first  to  the  last.  Thus  we  hold  it  clear  to  every 
candid  inquirer,  that  our  text  simply  proves  the  necessity  of 
a  right  temper  to  the  profitable  perusal  of  the  Bible.  It  gives 
no  such  exclusive  characteristic  to  the  writings  of  St.  Paul, 
as  would  warrant  our  pronouncing  them  peculiarly  unsuited 
to  the  weak  and  illiterate.  If  it  sanction  the  withdrawment 
of  any  part  of  the  Bible,  it  imperatively  demands  the  with- 
drawment of  the  whole.  And  forasmuch  as  it  thus  gives  not 
the  shadow  of  authority  to  the  selection  of  one  part  and  the 
omission  of  another ;  and  forasmuch,  moreover,  as  it  contains 
not  the  remotest  hint  that  danger  is  a  reason  for  shutting  up 
the  Scriptures;  we  rather  learn  from  the  passage,  that  free 
as  the  air  should  be  the  Bible  to  the  whole  human  popula- 
tion, than  that  a  priesthood,  sitting  in  assize  on  its  contents, 
may  dole  out  fragments  of  the  word,  or  keep  it,  if  they  please, 
undividedly  to  themselves. 

We  are  not,  however,  required,  in  addressing  a  protestant 
assembly,  to  expose,  at  any  length,  the  falsehood  of  that  doc- 
trine of  popery  to  which  we  have  referred.  We  introduced 
its  mention,  simply  because  its  advocates  endeavor  to  uphold 
it  by  our  text.  They  just  give  a  new  witness  to  the.  truth  of 
the  text.  They  show,  that,  like  the  rest  of  the  Scriptures, 
this  verse  may  be  perverted.  The  very  passage  which  de- 
clares that  all  Scripture  may  be  wrested,  has  itself  been 
wrested  to  the  worst  and  most  pernicious  of  purposes.  So 
that,  as  if  in  verification  of  the  statement  of  St.  Peter,  when 
that  statement  became  part  of  the  Bible,  it  was  seized  upon 
by  the  "  unlearned  and  unstable,"  and  wrenched  from  its 
original  bearings. 

But  we  desire,  on  the  present  occasion,  to  bring  before  you 
what  we  count  important  considerations,  suggested  by  the 
announcement  that  there  are  difficulties  in  Scripture.  We 
have  the  decision  of  an  inspired  writer,  that,  in  the  volume 
of  inspiration  there  "  are  some  things  hard  to  be  understood." 
We  lay  great  stress  on  the  fact,  that  it  is  an  inspired  writer 
who  gives  this  decision.  The  Bible  attests  the  difficulties  of 
the  Bible.  If  we  knew  the  Bible  to  be  difficult,  only  as  find- 
ing it  difficult,  we  might  be  inclined  to  suppose  it  luminous 


252  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 

to  others,  though  obscure  to  ourselves.  We  should  not  so 
thoroughly  understand  that  the  difficulties,  which  one  man 
meets  with  in  the  study  of  Scripture,  are  not  simply  pro- 
duced by  his  intellectual  inferiority  to  another — no,  nor  by 
his  moral  or  spiritual  inferiority — but  are,  in  a  great  degree, 
inherent  in  the  subject  examined,  so  that  no  equipment  of 
learning  and  prayer  will  altogether  secure  their  removal. 
The  assertion  of  our  text  may  be  called  an  unqualified  as- 
sertion. The  proof,  that  there  are  "  things  hard  to  be  under- 
stood," does  not  lie  in  the  fact,  that  these  things  are  wrested 
by  "  the  unlearned  and  unstable  :"  for  then,  by  parity  of  rea- 
son, we  should  make  St.  Peter  declare  that  all  Scripture  is 
"  hard  to  be  understood."  The  assertion  is  independent  on 
what  follows,  and  shows  the  existence  of  difficulties,  whether 
or  no  they  gave  occasion  to  perversions  of  the  Bible.  And 
though  it  is  of  the  writings  of  St.  Paul,  and  of  these  alone, 
that  the  assertion  is  made,  we  may  infer  naturally,  from  the 
remainder  of  the  passage,  that  the  apostle  intended  to  imply 
that  difficulties  are  scattered  through  the  whole  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, so  that  it  is  a  general  characteristic  of  the  Bible,  that 
there  are  in  it  "  some  things  hard  to  be  understood." 

Now  it  is  upon  this  characteristic — a  characteristic,  you 
observe,  not  imagined  by  ourselves,  because  often  unable  to 
bring  out  all  the  force  of  a  passage,  but  fastened  on  the 
Scriptures  by  the  Scriptures  themselves — that  we  desire  to 
turn  your  attention.  We  have  before  us  a  feature  of  reve- 
lation, drawn  by  revelation  itself,  and  not  sketched  by  hu- 
man surmise  or  discovery.  And  it  seems  to  us  that  this 
feature  deserves  our  very  closest  examination,  and  that  from 
such  examination  we  may  look  to  derive  lessons  of  more 
than  ordinary  worth.  We  take  into  our  hands  the  Bible, 
and  receive  it  as  a  communication  of  God's  will,  made,  in 
past  ages,  to  his  creatures.  And  we  know  that,  occupying, 
as  all  men  do,  the  same  level  of  helplessness  and  destitution, 
so  that  the  adventitious  circumstances  of  rank  and  educa- 
tion bring  with  them  no  differences  in  moral  position,  it  can- 
not be  the  design  of  the  Almighty,  that  superior  talent,  or 
superior  learning,  should  be  essential  to  the  obtaining  due 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  253 

acquaintance  with  revelation.     There  can  be  no  fairer  ex- 
pectation than  that  the  Bible  will  be  intelligible  to  every 
capacity,  and  that  it  will  not,  either  in  matter  or  manner, 
adapt  itself  to  one  class  in  preference  to  another.      And 
when,  with  all  this  antecedent  idea  that  revelation  will  con- 
descend to  the  very  meanest  understanding,  we  find,  as  it 
were,  on  the  covers  of  the  book,  the  description  that  there 
are  in  it  "  things  hard  to  be  understood,"  we  may,  at  first, 
feel  something  of  surprise  that  difficulty  should  occur  where 
we  had  looked  for  simplicity.     And  undoubtedly,  however 
fair  the  expectation  just  mentioned,  the  Bible  is,  in  some 
senses,  a  harder  book  for  the  uneducated  man  than  for  the 
educated.    So  far  as  human  instrumentality  is  concerned,  the 
great  mass  of  a  population  must  be  indebted  to  a  fe,\v  learned 
men  for  any  acquaintance  whatsoever  with  the  Scriptures. 
Never  let  learning  be  made  of  small  account  in  reference  to 
religion,  when,  without  learning,  a  kingdom  must  remain 
virtually  without  a  revelation.     If  there  were  no  learning  in 
a  land,  or  if  that  learning  were  not  brought  to  bear  on  trans- 
lations of  Scripture,  how  could  one  out  of  a  thousand  know 
any  thing  of  the  Bible  1     Those  who  would  dispense  with 
literature  in  a  priesthood,  undermine  a  nation's  great  ram- 
part against  heathenism.     And  just  as  the  unlearned  are 
thus,  at  the  very  outset,  dependent  altogether  on  the  learned, 
it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  learned  man  will  possess  al- 
ways a  superiority  over  the  unlearned,  and  that  he  has  an 
apparatus  at  his  disposal,  which  the  other  has  not,  for  over- 
coming much  that  is  difficult  in  Scripture. 

But  after  all,  when  St.  Peter  speaks  of  "  things  hard  to  be 
understood,"  he  cannot  be  considered  as  referring  to  obscuri- 
ties which  human  learning  will  dissipate.  He  certainly  men- 
tions the  "  unlearned  "  as  wresting  these  difficulties,  implying 
that  the  want  of  one  kind  of  learning  produced  the  perver- 
sion. But,  of  course,  he  intends  by  "  unlearned  "  those  who 
were  not  fully  taught  of  the  Spirit,  and  not  those  who  were 
deficient  in  the  acquirements  of  the  academy.  There  were 
but  few  of  the  learned  of  the  earth  amongst  the  apostles  and 
their  followers;  and  it  were  absurd  to  imngine  that  all  but 


254 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 


those  wrested  the  Scriptures  to  their  destruction.  And,  there- 
fore, whilst  we  frankly  allow  that  there  are  difficulties  in 
Holy  Writ,  for  the  coping  with  which  human  learning  equips 
an  individual — historical  difficulties,  for  example,  grammati- 
cal, chronological — we  see,  at  once,  that  it  cannot  be  to  these 
St.  Peter  refers ;  since,  when  he  wrote,  either  these  difficul- 
ties had  not  come  into  existence,  or  he  himself  was  classed 
with  the  "  unlearned,"  if  by  "  unlearned  "  were  intended 
the  men  unenlightened  by  science. 

We  thus  assure  ourselves,  that,  in  allowing  "  things  hard 
to  be  understood"  to  find  place  in  the  volume  of  inspiration, 
God  has  dealt  with  mankind  irrespectively  of  the  differences 
of  rank.  It  cannot  be  human  learning  which  makes  these 
things  comparatively  easy  to  be  understood.  They  must 
remain  hard,  aye,  and  equally  hard,  whatever  the  literary 
advantages  of  a  student:  otherwise  the  whole  statement  of 
our  text  becomes  unintelligible.  The  "  unlearned,"  in  short, 
are  also  "  the  unstable  :"  it  is  not  the  want  of  earthly  scho- 
larship which  makes  the  difficulties,  it  is  the  want  of  moral 
stedfastness  which  occasions  the  wresting.  We  have  nothing, 
therefore,  to  do,  in  commenting  on  the  words  of  St.  Peter, 
with  difficulties  which  may  be  caused  by  a  defective,  and 
removed  by  a  liberal  education.  The  difficulties  must  be 
difficulties  of  subject.  The  things  which  are  handled,  and 
which  are  "  hard  to  be  understood,"  must,  in  themselves,  be 
deep  and  mysterious,  and  not  such  as  present  intricacies 
which  human  criticism  may  prevail  to  unravel.  And  that 
there  are  many  of  these  things  in  the  Bible  will  be  question- 
ed by  none  who  have  given  themselves  to  its  study.  It  were 
a  waste  of  time  to  adduce  instances  of  the  difficulties.  To  be 
unacquainted  with  them  is  to  be  unacquainted  with  Scrip- 
ture ;  whilst  to  be  surprised  at  their  existence  is  to  be  surpris- 
ed at  what  we  may  call  unavoidable.  It  is  this  latter  point 
which  chiefly  requires  illustration,  though  there  are  others 
which  must  not  be  passed  over  in  silence.  We  assume,  there- 
fore, as  matter-of-fact,  that  there  are  in  Scripture  "  things 
hard  to  be  understood."  We  shall  endeavor  to  show  you,  in 
the  first  place,  that  this  fact  was  to  be  expected.    We  shall 


1HE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCR1PTCRK.  255 

then,  in  the  second  place,  point  out  the  advantages  winch 
follow  from  the  fact,  and  the  dispositions  which  it  should 
encourage. 

And,  first,  we  would  show  you — though  this  point  requires 
but  brief  examination — that  it  was  to  be  expected,  that  the 
Bible  would  contain  "  some  things  hard  to  be  understood." 
We  should  like  to  be  told  what  stamp  of  inspiration  there 
would  be  upon  a  Bible  containing  nothing  "  hard  to  be  un- 
derstood." Is  it  not  almost  a  self-evident  proposition,  that  a 
revelation  without  difficulty  could  not  be  a  revelation  of  di- 
vinity 1  If  there  lie  any  thing  of  that  unmeasured  separa- 
tion, which  we  are  all  conscious  there  must  lie,  between 
ourselves  and  the  Creator,  is  it  not  clear  that  God  cannot  be 
comprehensible  by  man  ;  and  that,  therefore,  any  professed 
revelation,  which  left  him  not  incomprehensible,  would  be 
thereby  its  own  witness  to  the  falsehood  of  its  pretensions  ? 
You  ask  a  Bible  which  shall,  in  every  part,  be  simple  and 
intelligible.  But  could  such  a  Bible  discourse  to  us  of  God, 
that  Being  who  must  remain,  necessarily  and  for  ever,  a 
mystery  to  the  very  highest  of  created  intelligences  ?  Could 
such  a  Bible  treat  of  purposes,  which,  extending  themselves 
over  unlimited  ages,  and  embracing  the  universe  within 
their  ranges,  demand  eternity  for  their  development,  and  in- 
finity for  their  theatre  ?  Could  such  a  Bible  put  forward 
any  account  of  spiritual  operations,  seeing  that,  whilst  con- 
fined by  the  trammels  of  matter,  the  soul  cannot  fathom  her- 
self, but  withdraws  herself,  as  it  were,  and  shrinks  from  her 
own  scrutiny  ?  Could  such  a  Bible,  in  short,  tell  us  any  thing 
of  our  condition,  whether  by  nature  or  grace  'I  Could  it  treat 
of  the  entrance  of  evil :  could  it  treat  of  the  Incarnation  ;  of 
Regeneration;  of  a  Resurrection;  of  an  Immortality?  In 
reference  to  all  these  matters,  there  are  in  the  Bible  "  things 
hard  to  be  understood."  But  it  is  not  the  manner  in  which 
they  are  handled  which  makes  them  "  hard  to  be  under- 
stood." The  subject  itself  gives  the  difficulty.  If  you  will 
not  have  the  difficulty,  you  cannot  have  the  subject.  You 
must  have  a  Revelation  which  shall  say  nothing  on  the  na- 
ture of  God,  for  that  must  remain  inexplicable  ;  nothing  on 


206  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 

the  soul,  for  that  must  remain  inexplicable  ;  nothing  on  the 
processes  and  workings  of  grace,  for  these  must  remain  in- 
explicable. You  must  have  a  Revelation,  which  shall  not 
only  tell  you  that  such  and  such  things  are,  but  which  shall 
also  explain  to  you  how  they  are  ;  their  mode,  their  consti- 
tution, their  essence.  And  if  this  were  the  character  of  Re- 
velation, it  would  undoubtedly  be  so  constructed  as  never  to 
overtask  reason  ;  but  it  would,  just  as  clearly,  be  kept  with- 
in this  boundary  only  by  being  stripped  of  all  on  which  we 
mainly  need  a  Revelation.  A  Revelation  in  which  there 
shall  be  nothing  "  hard  to  be  understood."  must  limit  itself 
by  the  powers  of  reason,  and,  therefore,  exclude  those  very 
topics  on  which,  reason  being  insufficient,  revelation  is  re- 
quired. We  wish  you  to  be  satisfied  on  the  point,  that  scrip- 
tural difficulties  are  not  the  result  of  obscurity  of  style,  of 
brevity  of  communication,  or  of  a  designed  abstruseness  in 
the  method  of  argument.  The  difficulties  lie  simply  in  the 
mysteriousness  of  the  subjects.  There  is  no  want  of  simpli- 
city of  language  when  God  is  described  to  us  as  always 
every  where.  But  who  understands  this  ?  Can  language 
make  this  intelligible  ?  Revelation  assures  us  of  the  fact ; 
reason,  with  all  her  stridings,  cannot  overtake  that  fact. 
But  would  you,  therefore,  require  that  the  omnipresence  of 
Deity  should  be  shut  out  from  revelation  ?  There  is  a  per- 
fect precision  and  plainness  of  speech,  when  the  Bible  dis- 
courses on  the  Word  being  made  flesh,  and  on  the  second 
person  in  the  Trinity  humbling  himself  to  the  being  "  found 
in  fashion  as  a  man."*  But  who  can  grapple  with  this  pro- 
digy 1  Is  the  palpable  impossibility  of  explaining,  or  under- 
standing it,  at  all  the  result  of  deficiency  of  statement?  Who 
does  not  feel  that  the  impossibility  lies  in  himself,  and  that 
the  matter  is  unintelligible,  because  necessarily  overpassing 
the  sweep  of  his  intelligence  ?  He  can  receive  the  bare  fact ; 
he  cannot  receive  the  explanation.  But  shall  we,  on  this 
account,  and  just  in  order  to  have  a  Bible  free  from  "  things 
hard  to  be  understood,"  require  the  Incarnation  to  be  ex- 
punged from  revelation  ? 

*  Philippians,  2  :  8. 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  257" 

We  might  argue  in  like  manner  with  regard   to  every 
Scriptural  difficulty.    We  account  for  the  existence  of  these 
difficulties  mainly  by  the  fact  that  we  are  men,  and,  because 
men,  finite  in  our  capacities.    We  suppose  not  that  it  would 
have  been  possible,  by  any  power  of  description  or  process 
of  explanation,  to  have  made  those  things  which  are  now 
hard,  easier  to  be  understood,  unless  the  human  faculties 
had  been  amplified  and  strengthened,  so  that  men  had  been 
carried  up  to  a  higher  rank  of  being.    We  can  quite  believe 
that  to  an  angel,  endowed  with  a  nobler  equipment  of  intel- 
lectual energy,  and   unincumbered  with  a  frame-work  of 
matter,  there  would  be  a  far  clearer  idea  conveyed  by  the 
revelation,  that  "  there  are  three  that  bear  record  in  heaven, 
and  these  three  are  one,"*  than  is  conveyed  by  such  an- 
nouncement to  ourselves.    But  it  does  not,  therefore,  follow 
that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  might  have  been  made  as 
comprehensible  by  us  as  by  angels.    Let  there  be  only  the 
same  amount  of  revelation,  and  the  angel  may  know  more 
than  the  man,  because  gifted  with  a  keener  and  more  vigo- 
rous understanding.    And  it  is  evident,  therefore,  that  few 
things  could  have  less  warranty  than  the  supposition,  that 
revelation  might  have  been  so  enlarged,  that  the  knowledge 
of  man  would  have  reached  to  the  measure  of  the  knowledge 
of  angels.    We  again  say  that  there  is  no  deficiency  of  reve- 
lation, and  that  the  difficulties  which  occur  in  the  perusal  of 
Scripture  result  from  the  majesty  of  the  introduced  subjects, 
and  the  weakness  of  the  faculties  turned  on  their  study.    It 
is  little  short  of  a  contradiction  in  terms,  to  speak  of  a  reve- 
lation free  altogether  from  "  things  hard  to  be  understood." 
And  we  are  well  persuaded,  that,  however  disposed  men  may 
be  to  make  the  difficulties  an  objection  to  the  Bible,  the  ab- 
sence of  those  difficulties  would  have  been  eagerly  seized  on 
ns  a  proof  of  imposture.   There  would  have  been  fairness  in 
the  objection — and  scepticism  would  not  have  been  slow  in 
triumphantly  urging  it — that  a  book,  which  brought  down 
the  infinite  to  the  level  of  the  finite,  must  contain  false  repre- 

*  1  John,  5  :  7. 
33 


2.58  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE 

sentations,  and  deserve,  therefore,  to  be  placed  under  the 
outlawry  of  the  world.  We  should  have  had  reason  taking 
up  an  opposite  position,  but  one  far  more  tenable  than  she 
occupies  when  arguing  from  the  difficulty,  against  the  divi- 
nity, of  Scripture.  Reason  has  sagacity  enough,  if  you  re- 
move the  bias  of  the  "  evil  heart  of  unbelief,"*  to  perceive 
the  impossibility  that  God  should  be  searched  out  and  com- 
prehended by  man.  And  if.  therefore,  reason  sat  in  judgment 
on  a  professed  revelation  of  the  Almighty,  and  found  that  it 
gave  no  account  of  the  Deity,  but  one,  in  every  respect,  easy 
and  intelligible,  so  that  God  described  himself  as  removed 
not,  either  in  essence  or  properties,  from  the  ken  of  huma- 
nity, it  can  scarcely  be  questioned  that  she  would  give  down 
as  her  verdict,  and  that  justice  would  loudly  applaud  the 
decision,  that  the  alleged  communication  from  heaven  want- 
ed the  signs  the  most  elementary  of  so  illustrious  an  origin. 
It  can  only  be  viewed  as  a  necessary  consequence  on  the 
grandeur  of  the  subjects  which  form  the  matter  of  revelation, 
that,  with  every  endeavor  at  simplicity  of  style  and  aptitude 
of  illustration,  the  document  contains  statements  which  over- 
match all  but  the  faith  of  mankind.  And,  therefore,  we  are 
bold  to  say  that  we  glory  in  the  difficulties  of  Scripture, 
We  can  indeed  desire,  as  well  as  those  who  would  turn 
these  difficulties  into  occasion  of  cavil  and  objection,  to  un- 
derstand, with  a  thorough  accuracy,  the  registered  truths, 
and  to  penetrate  and  explore  those  solemn  mysteries  which 
crowd  the  pages  of  inspiration.  We  can  feel,  whilst  the  vo- 
lume of  Holy  Writ  lies  open  before  us,  and  facts  are  present- 
ed which  seem  every  way  infinite — height,  and  breadth,  and 
depth,  and  length,  all  defying  the  boldest  journeyings  of  the 
spirit— we  can  feel  the  quick  pulse  of  an  eager  wish  to  scale 
the  mountain,  or  fathom  the  abyss.  But,  at  the  same  time, 
we  know,  and  we  feel,  that  a  Bible  without  difficulties  were 
a  firmament  without  stars.  We  know,  and  we  feel,  that  a  far- 
off  land,  enamelled,  as  we  believe  it,  with  a  loveliness  which 
is  not  of  this  earth,  and  inhabited  by  a  tenantry  gloriously 

*  Hebrews,  3  :  13. 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  259 

distinct  from  our  own  order  of  being-,  would  not  be  the  mag- 
nificent and  richly-peopled  domain  which  it  is,  if  its  descrip- 
tions overpassed  not  the  outlines  of  human  geography.  We 
know,  and  we  feel,  that  the  Creator  of  all  things,  he  who 
stretched  out  the  heavens,  and  sprinkled  them  with  worlds, 
could  not  be,  what  we  are  assured  that  He  is,  inaccessibly 
sublime  and  awfully  great,  if  there  could  be  given  us  a  por- 
trait of  his  nature  and  properties,  whose  every  feature  might 
be  sketched  by  a  human  pencil,  whose  every  characteristic 
scanned  by  a  human  vision.  We  know,  and  we  feel,  that 
the  vast  business  of  our  redemption,  arranged  in  the  coun- 
cils of  the  far-back  eternity,  and  acted  out  amid  the  wonder- 
ing and  throbbings  of  the  universe,  could  not  have  been  that 
stupendous  transaction  which  gave  God  glory  by  giving  sin- 
ners safety,  if  the  inspired  account  brought  its  dimensions 
within  the  compass  of  a  human  arithmetic,  or  defined  its 
issues  by  the  lines  of  a  human  demarcation.  And,  therefore, 
do  we  also  know  and  feel  that  it  is  a  witness  to  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Bible,  that,  when  this  Bible  would  furnish  us 
with  notices  of  the  unseen  world  hereafter  to  be  traversed, 
or  when  it  would  turn  thought  on  the  Omnipotent,  or  when 
it  would  open  up  the  scheme  of  the  restoration  of  the  fallen  ; 
then,  with  much  that  is  beautifully  simple,  and  which  the 
wayfaring  man  can  read  and  understand,  there  are  mingled 
dark  intimations,  and  pregnant  hints,  and  undeveloped  state- 
ments, before  which  the  weak  and  the  masterful  must  alike 
do  the  homage  of  a  reverent  and  uncalculating  submission. 
We  could  not  rise  up  from  the  perusal  of  Scripture  with  a 
deep  conviction  that  it  is  the  word  of  the  living  God,  if  we 
had  found  no  occasions  on  which  reason  was  required  to 
humble  herself  before  giant-like  truth,  and  implicit  faith  has 
been  the  only  act  which  came  within  our  range  of  moral 
achievement.  We  do  not  indeed  say — for  the  saying  would 
carry  absurdity  on  its  forefront — that  we  believe  a  document 
inspired,  because,  in  part,  incomprehensible.  But  if  a  docu- 
ment profess  to  be  inspired ;  and  if  it  treat  of  subjects  which 
we  can  prove  beforehand  to  be  above  and  beyond  the  stretch- 
ings of  our  intellect;  then,  we  do  say  that  the  finding  no- 


2G0  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 

thing  in  such  a  document  to  baffle  the  understanding  would 
be  a  proof  the  most  conclusive,  that  what  alleges  itself  divine 
deserves  rejection  as  a  forgery.  And  whilst,  therefore,  we 
see  going  forward  on  all  sides  the  accumulation  of  the  evi- 
dences of  Christianity,  and  history  and  science  are  bringing 
their  stores  and  emptying  them  at  the  feet  of  our  religion, 
and  the  very  wrath  of  the  adversary,  being  the  accomplish- 
ment of  prophecy,  is  proving  that  we  follow  no  "  cunningly 
devised  fables  ;"*  we  feel  that  it  was  so  much  to  be  expected, 
yea,  rather  that  it  was  altogether  so  unavoidable,  that  a  re- 
velation would,  in  many  parts,  be  obscure,  that  we  take  as 
the  last  link  in  the  chain  of  a  lengthened  and  irrefragable 
demonstration,  that  there  are  in  the  Bible  "  things  hard  to 
be  understood." 

But  we  trench  on  the  second  division  of  our  subject,  and 
will  proceed,  therefore,  to  the  more  distinct  exposition  of  the 
advantages  which  follow,  and  the  dispositions  which  should 
be  encouraged  by,  the  fact  which  has  passed  under  review. 
We  see,  at  once,  from  the  statement  of  St.  Peter,  that  effects, 
to  all  appearance  disastrous,  are  produced  by  the  difficulties 
of  Scripture.  The  "  unlearned  and  unstable"  wrest  these 
difficulties  to  "  their  own  destruction  ;"  and,  therefore,  though 
we  have  proved  these  difficulties  unavoidable,  by  what  pro- 
cess of  reasoning  can  they  be  proved  advantageous  ?  Now, 
if  we  have  carried  you  along  with  us  through  our  foregoing 
argument,  you  are  already  furnished  with  one  answer  to  this 
inquiry.  We  have  shown  you  that  the  absence  of  difficulties 
would  go  far  towards  proving  the  Scriptures  uninspired ; 
and  we  need  not  remark  that  there  must  be  a  use  for  diffi- 
culties, if  essential  to  the  complete  witness  for  the  truth  of 
Christianity.  But  there  are  other  advantages  which  must,  on 
no  account,  be  overlooked.  We  only  wish  it  premised,  that, 
though  the  difficulties  of  Scripture — as,  for  example,  those 
parts  which  involve  predestination — are  wrested  by  many 
"to  their  own  destruction,"  the  "unlearned  and  unstable" 
would  have  equally  perished,  had  no  difficulties  whatsoever 

*  2  Peter,  1  :  16. 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  261 

existed.  As  the  case  indeed  now  stands,  the  "  things  hard  to 
be  understood "  are  the  stumbling-blocks  over  which  they 
fall,  and,  falling,  are  destroyed.  But  they  would  have  stum- 
bled on  the  plain  ground  as  well  as  on  the  rough  :  there  be- 
ing no  more  certain  truth  in  theology,  than  that  the  cause 
of  stumbling  is  the  internal  feebleness,  and  not  the  external 
impediment.  A  man  may  perish,  ostensibly  through  abuse 
of  the  doctrine  of  election.  He  may  say,  I  am  elect,  and, 
therefore,  shall  be  saved,  though  I  continue  in  sin.  Thus  he 
wrests  election,  and  that  too  to  his  own  certain  destruction. 
But  would  he  not  have  perished  had  he  found  no  such  doc- 
trine to  wrest?  Aye,  that  he  would  ;  as  fatally,  and  as  finally. 
It  is  the  love  of  sin,  the  determination  to  live  in  sin,  which 
destroys  him.  And  though,  whilst  giving  the  reins  to  his 
lusts,  he  attempts  to  derive  from  election  a  quietus  and  ex- 
cuse, can  you  think  that  he  would  be  at  a  loss  to  find  them 
elsewhere,  if  there  were  no  doctrine  of  election  from  which, 
when  abused,  they  may  be  wrenched  and  extorted  ?  It  is 
possible  that  a  man  may  slay  himself  with  "  the  sword  of 
the  Spirit  ;"*  but  only  because  he  is  so  bent  upon  suicide,  that, 
had  he  not  found  so  costly  a  weapon,  he  would  have  fallen 
on  a  ruder  and  less  polished.  Satan  has  every  kind  of  instru- 
ment in  his  armory,  and  leaves  no  one  at  a  loss  for  a  method 
of  self-destruction.  So  that,  had  it  not  been  unavoidable  that 
"  things  hard  to  be  understood  "  should  find  place  in  the 
Bible,  their  insertion,  though  apparently  causing  the  ruin  of 
many,  would  in  no  degree  have  impeached  the  loving-kind- 
ness of  the  Almighty.  Scriptural  difficulties  destroy  none 
who  would  not  have  been  destroyed  had  no  difficulties  ex- 
isted. And,  therefore,  difficulties  might  be  permitted  for  cer- 
tain ends  which  they,  undoubtedly,  subserve,  and  yet  not  a 
solitary  individual  be  injured  by  an  allowance  which  is  to 
benefit  the  great  body  of  the  church.  We  wish  this  conclu- 
sion borne  carefully  in  mind,  because  the  first  impression,  on 
reading  our  text,  is,  that  some  are  destroyed  by  the  "  things 
hard  to  be  understood,"  and  that  they  would  not  have  been 

*  Ephesians,  6  :  17. 


262 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 


destroyed  without  these  things  to  wrest.  This  first  impres- 
sion is  a  wrong  one ;  the  hard  things  giving  the  occasion, 
but  never  being  the  cause  of  destruction.  The  unstable 
wrest  what  is  difficult.  But,  rather  than  be  without  some- 
thing to  pervert,  if  there  were  not  the  difficult,  they  would 
wrest  the  simple. 

This  being  premised,  we  may  enlarge,  without  fear,  on 
the  advantages  resulting  from  the  fact,  that  Scripture  con- 
tains ".some  things  hard  to  be  understood."  And  first,  if 
there  were  nothing  in  Scripture  which  overpowered  our 
reason,  who  sees  not  that  intellectual  pride  would  be  fostered 
by  its  study  1  The  grand  moral  discipline  which  the  Bible 
now  exerts,  and  which  renders  its  perusal  the  best  exercise 
to  which  men  can  be  subjected,  lies  simply  in  its  perpetual 
requisition  that  Reason  submit  herself  to  Revelation.  You 
can  make  no  way  with  the  disclosures  of  Holy  Writ,  until 
prepared  to  receive,  on  the  authority  of  God,  a  vast  deal 
which,  of  yourself,  you  cannot  prove,  and  still  more,  which 
you  cannot  explain.  And  it  is  a  fine  schooling  for  the  stu- 
dent, when,  at  every  step  in  his  research,  he  finds  himself 
thrown  on  his  faith,  required  to  admit  truth  because  the  Al- 
mighty hath  spoken  it,  and  not  because  he  himself  can  de- 
monstrate. It  is  just  the  most  rigorous  and  wholesome  tui- 
tion under  which  the  human  mind  can  be  brought,  when  it 
is  continually  called  off  from  its  favorite  processes  of  argu- 
ment and  commentary,  and  summoned  into  the  position  of  a 
meek  recipient  of  intelligence  to  be  taken  without  question- 
ing:— honored  with  belief  when  it  cannot  be  cleared  by  ex- 
position. And  of  all  this  schooling  and  tuition  you  would 
instantly  deprive  us,  if  you  took  away  from  the  Bible  "  things 
hard  to  be  understood."  Nay,  it  were  comparatively  little 
that  we  should  lose  the  discipline  :  we  should  live  under  a 
counter  system,  encouraging  what  we  are  bound  to  repress. 
If  man  were  at  all  left  to  entertain  the  idea  that  he  can  com- 
prehend God,  or  measure  his  purposes — and  such  idea  might 
be  lawful,  were  there  no  mysteries  in  Scripture — we  know 
no  bounds  which  could  be  set  to  his  intellectual  haughti- 
ness :  for  if  reason  seemed  able  to  embrace  Deity,  who  could 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRirTUKE,  263 

persuade  her  that  she  is  scant  and  contracted  ?  I  might  al- 
most be  pardoned  the  fostering  a  consciousness  of  mental 
greatness,  and  the  supposing  myself  endowed  with  a  vast 
nobility  of  spirit,  if  I  found  that  I  kept  pace  with  all  the 
wonders  which  God  brought  out  from  his  own  nature  and 
his  own  dwelling,  and  if  no  disclosures  were  made  to  this 
creation  too  dazzling  for  my  scrutiny,  or  too  deep  for  my  pe- 
netration. A  Bible  without  difficulties  would  be  a  censer  full 
of  incense  to  man's  reason.  It  would  be  the  greatest  flatterer 
of  reason,  passing  on  it  a  compliment  and  eulogy  which 
would  infinitely  outdo  the  most  far-fetched  of  human  pane- 
gyrics. And  if  the  fallen  require  to  be  kept  humble  ;  if  we 
can  advance  in  spiritual  attainment  only  in  proportion  as  we 
feel  our  insignificance ;  would  not  this  conversion  of  the 
Bible  into  the  very  nurse  and  encourager  of  intellectual 
pride,  abstract  its  best  worth  from  revelation :  and  who, 
therefore,  will  deny  that  we  are  advantaged  by  the  fact,  that 
there  are  in  Scripture  "things  hard  to  be  understood  ?" 

We  remark  again,  that  though  controversy  have  its  evils, 
it  has  also  its  uses.  We  never  infer,  that,  because  there  is  no 
controversy  in  a  church,  there  must  be  the  upholding  of 
sound  doctrine.  It  is  not  the  stagnant  water  which  is  gene- 
rally the  purest.  And  if  there  are  no  differences  of  opinion 
which  set  men  on  examining  and  ascertaining  their  own 
belief,  the  probability  is,  that,  like  the  Samaritans  of  old,  they 
will  worship  they  "  know  not  what."*  Heresy  itself  is,  in 
one  sense,  singularly  beneficial.  It  helps  to  sift  a  professing 
community,  and  to  separate  the  chaff  from  the  wheat.  And 
whilst  the  unstable  are  carried  about  by  the  winds  of  false 
doctrine,  those  who  keep  their  stedfastness  find,  as  it  were, 
their  moral  atmosphere  cleared  by  the  tempest.  We  consider 
this  statement  to  be  that  of  St.  Paul,  when  he  says  to  the 
Corinthians,  "  There  must  be  also  heresies  amongst  you, 
that  they  which  are  approved  may  be  made  manifest."!  And 
it  is  not  the  mere  separation  of  the  genuine  from  the  fictitious 
which  is  effected  through  the  publication  of  error.    We  hold 

•  John,  4  :  23. tl  Corinthians,  II  :  19. 


264  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 

that  heresies  have  been  of  vast  service  to  the  Church,  in  that 
they  have  caused  truth  to  be  more  thoroughly  scanned,  and 
all  its  bearings  and  boundaries  explored  with  a  most  pains- 
taking industry.  It  is  astonishing  how  apt  men  are  to  rest  in 
general  and  ill-defined  notions,  so  that,  when  interrogated 
and  probed  on  an  article  of  faith,  they  show  themselves 
unable  to  give  account  of  their  belief.  When  a  new  error  is 
propounded,  you  will  find  that  candid  men  will  confess,  that, 
on  examining  their  own  views  on  the  litigated  point,  they 
have  found  them  in  many  respects  vague  and  incoherent ; 
so  that,  until  driven  to  the  work  of  expounding  and  de- 
fining, they  have  never  suspected  their  ignorance  upon 
matters  with  which  they  professed  themselves  altogether 
familiar.  We  think  that  few  men  would  have  correct  no- 
tions of  truth,  unless  occasionally  compelled  to  investi- 
gate their  own  opinions.  They  take  for  granted  that  they 
understand  what  they  believe.  But  when  heresy  or  con- 
troversy arises,  and  they  are  required  to  state  what  they 
hold,  they  will  themselves  be  surprised  at  the  confusion  of 
their  sentiments.  We  are  persuaded,  for  example,  that,  how- 
ever mischievous  in  many  respects  may  have  been  the  mo- 
dern agitation  of  the  question  of  Christ's  humanity,  the  great 
body  of  christians  have  been  thereby  advantaged.  Until  the 
debate  was  raised,  hundreds  and  thousands  were  uncon- 
sciously holding  error.  Being  never  required  to  define  the 
true  doctrine  of  the  Savior's  person,  they  never  doubted  that 
they  knew  and  understood  it,  though,  all  the  while,  they 
either  confounded  the  natures,  or  multiplied  the  person  ;  or 
— and  this  was  the  ordinary  case — formed  no  idea  at  all  on 
so  mysterious,  yet  fundamental  a  matter.  Thus  controversy 
stirs  the  waters,  and  prevents  their  growing  stagnant.  We 
do  not  indeed  understand  from  the  "  must  be  "  of  St.  Paul, 
that  the  well-being  of  the  church  is  dependent  on  heresy,  so 
that,  unless  heresy  enter,  the  church  cannot  prosper.  But 
we  can  readily  suppose  that  God,  foreknowing  the  corrup- 
tions which  would  be  attempted  of  the  Gospel,  determined 
to  employ  these  corruptions  as  instruments  for  speeding  on- 
ward the  growth  in  grace  of  his  people.     The  "  must  be  " 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    3CR1PTURE.  265 

refers  to  human  depravity  and  satanic  influence.     It  indi- 
cates a  necessity  for  which  the  creature  alone  is  answerable, 
whilst  the  end,  which  heresies  subserve,  is  that  which  most 
engages  the  interferences  of  the  Creator.     Thus  we  speak 
of  evil  as  beneficial,  only  as  over-ruled  by  the  Almighty,  and 
pronounce  controversy  advantageous,  because  a  corrupt  na- 
ture needs  frequent  agitation.     If  never  called  to  defend  the 
truth,  the  church  would  comparatively  lose  sight  of  what 
truth  is.     And  therefore,  however  the  absence  of  controversy 
may  agree  well  with  a  millennial  estate,  we  are  amongst  the 
last  who  would  desire  that  it  should  not  now  be  heard  in 
the  land.     We  feel  that  if  now  "  the  wolf  should  dwell  with 
the  lamb,  and  the  leopard  lie  down  with  the  kid,"*  we  should 
have  nothing  but  the  millennium  of  liberalism  ;  the  lamb 
being  nothing  more  than  the  wolf  in  disguise,  and  the  kid 
the  leopard  with  his  spots  slightly  colored.      Such  is  the 
constitution  of  man — and  such  it  will  be,  till  there  pass  over 
this  globe  a  mighty  regeneration — that,  unless  there  be  op- 
position, we  shall  have  no  purity.     Dissent  itself,  with  its 
manifold  and  multiform  evils,  has  done  the  church  service  ; 
and,  by  rousing  energies  which  might  otherwise  have  lain 
dormant,  has  given  fixedness  where  it  thought  to  undermine. 
But  if  there  were  no  scriptural  difficulties,  we  could  have 
no  controversy.     The  "  things  hard  to  be  understood  "  form 
the  groundwork  of  differences  of  opinion  :  and,  if  these  were 
swept  away,  there  would  either  be  space  for  only  one  theory, 
or,  if  another  were  broached,  it  would  be  too  absurd  for  de- 
bate.    So  that  scriptural  difficulties  are  literally  the  preser- 
vatives of  sound  doctrine.     The  church  would  slumber  into 
ignorance  of  even  simple  and  elementary  truth,  if  there  were 
no  hard  things,  which,  wrested  by  the  unstable,  keep  her 
always  on  the  alert.      And   if,   therefore,   the  upholding, 
through  successive  generations,  of  a  clear  and  orthodox 
creed,  be  a  result  which  you  hail  as  teeming  with  advantage, 
have  we  not  a  right  to  press  home  on  you  the  fact,  that  it  is 
advantageous  to  mankind  that  there  are  in  the  Bible  "  some 
things  hard  to  be  understood  ?" 

*  Isaiah,  11:6. 
34 


266  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE, 

We  might  extend  on  all  sides  our  view  of  the  advantages 
of  difficulties.  But  we  are  confined  by  the  limits  of  a  dis- 
course, and  shall  only  adduce  one  other  illustration.  When 
I  read  the  Bible,  and  meet  with  passages  which,  after  the 
most  patient  exercises  of  thought  and  research,  remain  dark 
and  impenetrable,  then,  in  the  most  especial  degree,  I  feel 
myself  immortal.  The  finding  a  thing  "  hard  to  be  under- 
stood "  ministers  to  my  consciousness  that  I  am  no  perish- 
able, creature,  destined  to  a  finite  existence,  but  a  child  of 
eternity,  appointed  to  survive  the  dissolutions  of  matter,  and 
to  enter  on  another  and  an  untried  being.  If  the  Bible  be 
God's  revelation  of  himself  to  mankind,  it  is  a  most  fair  ex- 
pectation, that,  at  one  time  or  another,  the  whole  of  this  re- 
velation will  be  clear  and  accessible  ;  that  the  obscure  points^ 
which  we  cannot  now  elucidate,  and  the  lofty  points,  which 
we  cannot  now  scale,  will  be  enlightened  by  the  flashings 
of  a  brighter  luminary,  and  given  up  to  the  marchings  of  a 
more  vigorous  inquiry.  We  can  never  think  that  God  would 
tell  man  things  for  the  understanding  of  which  he  is  to  be 
always  incapacitated.  If  he  know  them  not  now,  the  very 
fact  of  their  being  told  is  sufficient  proof  that  he  shall  know 
them  hereafter.  And,  therefore,  in  every  scriptural  difficulty 
I  read  the  pledge  of  a  mighty  enlargement  of  the  human  fa- 
culties. In  every  mystery,  though  a  darkness  thick  as  the 
Egyptian  may  now  seem  to  shroud  it,  I  can  find  one  bright 
and  burning  spot,  glowing  with  promise  that  there  shall  yet 
come  a  day,  when,  every  power  of  the  soul  being  wrought 
into  a  celestial  strength,  I  shall  be  privileged,  as  it  were,  to 
stretch  out  the  hand  of  the  lawgiver  and  roll  back  the  clouds 
which  here  envelope  the  truth.  I  can  muse  upon  one  of  those 
things  which  are  "  hard  to  be  understood,"  till  it  seem  to  put 
on  the  prophet's  mantle,  and  preach  to  me  of  futurity ;  telling 
me,  in  accents  more  spirit-stirring  than  those  of  the  boldest 
of  mortal  oratory,  that  the  present  is  but  the  infancy  of  my 
being ;  and  that,  in  a  nobler  and  more  glorious  estate,  I  shall 
start  from  moral  and  mental  dwarfishness,  and,  endowed 
with  vigor  of  perception,  and  keenness  of  vision,  and  vast- 
ness  of  apprehension,   walk   the  labyrinth,  and  pierce  the 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  2G7 

rock,  and  weigh  the  mountain.  Oh,  I  can  thank  God  that, 
amongst  those  countless  mercies  which  he  has  poured  down 
on  our  pathway,  he  hath  given  us  a  Bible  which  is  not  in 
every  part  to  be  explained.  The  difficulties  of  Holy  Writ- 
let  them  be  made  by  objectors  the  subjects  of  marvel,  or  of 
cavil — they  constitute  one  great  sheet  of  our  charter  of  im- 
mortality :  and,  in  place  of  wondering  that  God  should  have 
permitted  them,  or  lamenting  that  they  cannot  be  overcome, 
I  rejoice  in  them  as  earnests,  given  me  by  Him  "  who  can- 
not lie,"*  that  man  hath  yet  to  advance  to  a  sublime  rank 
amongst  orders  of  intelligence,  and  to  stand,  in  the  maturity 
of  his  strength,  in  the  very  centre  of  the  panorama  of  truth. 
And  if  it  be  true  that  every  mystery  in  Scripture,  as  giving 
pledge  of  an  enlargement  of  capacities,  witnesses  to  the  glories 
with  which  the  future  comes  charged  ;  and  if  from  every  in- 
tricate passage,  and  every  dark  saying,  and  every  unfathom- 
able statement,  we  draw  new  proof  of  the  magnificence  of 
our  destinies ;  which  of  you  will  withhold  his  confession, 
that  the  difficulties  of  the  Bible  are  productive  of  benefit,  and 
that,  consequently,  there  result  advantages  from  the  fact, 
that  there  are  in  Scripture  "  some  things  hard  to  be  under- 
stood?" 

Such  are  certain  of  the  advantages  which  we  proposed  to 
investigate.  It  yet  remains  that  we  briefly  state,  and  call 
upon  you  to  cultivate,  the  dispositions  which  should  be 
brought  to  the  study  of  a  Bible  thus  "  hard  to  be  understood." 
We  have  shown  you  that  there  are  difficulties  in  Scripture 
which  must  remain  unexplained  whilst  we  continue  in  the 
flesh.  Other  difficulties  indeed  may  be  removed  by  thought, 
and  prayer,  and  research  ;  and  we  would  not  have  you  spar- 
ing of  any  of  these  appliances  when  you  examine  the  volume 
of  inspiration.  But  difficulties  which  are  inherent  in  the 
subject ;  things  "  hard  to  be  understood  "  because  they  deal, 
for  example,  with  the  nature,  and  purposes,  and  workings 
of  Deity ;  these  are  not  to  be  mastered  by  any  powers  of 
reason,  and  are,  therefore,  matters  for  the  exercise  of  faith 

*  Titus,  1  :  2. 


268  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 

rather  than  of  intellect.  We  ought  to  know,  before  we  open 
the  Bible,  that  it  must  present  difficulties  of  this  class  and 
description.  We  are  therefore  bound,  if,  in  idolizing  rea- 
son, we  should  not  degrade  and  decry  it,  to  sit  down  to  the 
study  of  Scripture  with  a  meek  and  chastened  understand- 
ing, expecting  to  be  baffled,  and  ready  to  submit.  We  tell 
the  young  amongst  you  more  especially,  who,  in  the  pride 
of  an  undisciplined  intellect,  would  turn  to  St.  Paul  as  they 
turn  to  Bacon  or  Locke,  arguing  that  what  was  written  for 
man  must  be  comprehensible  by  man — we  tell  them  that  no- 
thing is  excellent  out  of  its  place  ;  and  that,  in  the  exami- 
nation of  Scripture,  then  only  does  reason  show  herself 
noble,  when,  conscious  of  the  presence  of  a  king,  the  knee  is 
bent,  and  the  head  uncovered.  We  would  have  it,  therefore, 
remembered,  that  the  docility  and  submissiveness  of  a  child 
alone  befit  the  student  of  the  Bible ;  and  that,  if  we  would 
not  have  the  whole  volume  darkened,  its  simplest  truths 
eluding  the  grasp  of  our  understanding,  or  gaining,  at  least, 
no  hold  on  our  affections,  we  must  lay  aside  the  feelings 
which  we  carry  into  the  domains  of  science  and  philosophy, 
not  arming  ourselves  with  a  chivalrous  resolve  to  conquer, 
but  with  one  which  it  is  a  thousand-fold  harder  either  to 
form  or  execute,  to  yield. 

The  Holy  Spirit  alone  can  make  us  feel  the  things  which 
are  easy  to  be  understood,  and  prevent  our  wresting  those 
which  are  hard.  Never  then  should  the  Bible  be  opened  ex- 
cept with  prayer  for  the  teachings  of  this  Spirit.  You  will 
read  without  profit,  as  long  as  you  read  without  prayer.  It  is 
only  in  the  degree  that  the  Spirit,  which  indited  a  text,  takes 
it  from  the  page  and  breathes  it  into  the  heart,  that  we  can 
comprehend  its  meaning,  be  touched  by  its  beauty,  stirred 
by  its  remonstrance,  or  animated  by  its  promise.  We  shall 
never,  then,  master  scriptural  difficulties  by  the  methods 
which  prove  successful  in  grappling  with  philosophical. 
Why  is  it  that  the  poor  peasant,  whose  understanding  is  weak 
and  undisciplined,  has  clear  insight  into  the  meaning  of  verses, 
and  finds  in  them  irresistible  power  and  inexhaustible  com- 
fort, whilst  the  very  same  passages  are  given  up  as  myste- 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  269 

ries,  or  overlooked  as  unimportant,  by  the  high  and  lettered 
champion  of  a  scholastic  theology  ?  It  were  idle  to  deny  that 
our  rustic  divines  will  oftentimes  travel,  with  afar  stauncher 
and  more  dominant  step  than  our  collegiate,  into  the  depths 
of  a  scriptural  statement ;  and  that  you  might  obtain  from 
some  of  the  patriarchs  of  our  vallies,  whose  chief  instruction 
has  been  their  own  communing  with  the  Almighty,  such 
explanations  of  "  things  hard  to  be  understood"  as  would 
put  to  shame  the  commentaries  of  our  most  learned  exposi- 
tors. And  of  this  phenomenon  the  solution  would  be  hope- 
less, if  there  were  not  a  broad  instituted  difference  between 
human  and  sacred  literature  :  "  the  kingdom  of  heaven  " 
being  "  like  unto  treasure  hid  in  a  field  ;"*  and  the  finding 
this  treasure  depending  not  at  all  on  the  power  of  the  intel- 
lect brought  to  the  search,  but  on  the  heartiness  and  the 
earnestness  with  which  the  Psalmist's  prayer  is  used,  "open 
thou  mine  eyes,  that  I  may  behold  wondrous  things  out  of 
thy  law."f  If  you  open  a  scientific  book,  or  study  an  abstruse 
and  metaphysical  work,  let  reason  gird  herself  boldly  for  the 
task :  the  province  belongs  fairly  to  her  jurisdiction  ;  and  she 
may  cling  to  her  own  energies  without  laying  herself  open 
to  the  charge,  that,  according  to  the  characteristic  which  Joel 
gives  of  the  last  times,  the  weak  is  vaunting  itself  the  strong.! 
But  if  you  open  the  Bible,  and  sit  down  to  the  investigation 
of  scriptural  truth,  you  are  in  a  district  which  lies  far  beyond 
the  just  limits  of  the  empire  of  reason  :  there  is  need  of  an 
apparatus  wholly  distinct  from  that  which  sufficed  for  your 
former  inquiry  :  and  if  you  think  to  comprehend  revelation, 
except  so  far  as  the  author  shall  act  as  interpreter,  you  are, 
most  emphatically,  the  weak  pronouncing  yourselves  the 
strong,  and  the  Bible  shall  be  to  you  a  closed  book,  and  you 
shall  break  not  the  seals  which  God  himself  hath  placed  on 
the  volume.  Oh,  they  are  seals  which  melt  away  like  a 
snow-wreath,  before  the  breathings  of  the  Spirit ;  but  not  all 
the  fire  of  human  genius  shall  ever  prevail  to  dissolve  or 
loosen  them. 

*  Matthew.  13  :  44. 1  Psalm  119  :  18 1  Joel,  3  :  10. 


270  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE. 

We  feel  that  we  have  a  difficult  part  to  perform  in  minis- 
tering to  the  congregation  which  assembles  within  these 
walls.  Gathered  as  it  is  from  many  parts,  and,  without 
question,  including  oftentimes  numbers  who  make  no  pro- 
fession whatsoever  of  religion,  we  think  it  bound  on  us  to 
seek  out  great  variety  of  subjects,  so  that,  if  possible,  the 
case  of  none  of  the  audience  may  be  quite  overlooked  in  a 
series  of  discourses.  And  we  feel  it  peculiarly  needful  that 
we  touch  now  and  then,  as  we  have  done  this  night,  on  to- 
pics connected  with  infidelity,  because  we  fear  that  infidelity 
is  growing  in  the  land,  and  specially  amongst  its  well-edu- 
cated youth.  If  there  be  one  saying  in  the  Bible,  bearing 
reference  to  the  things  of  the  present  dispensation,  on  which 
we  look  with  greater  awe  than  on  another,  it  is  this  of  Christ 
Jesus,  "  when  the  Son  of  Man  cometh,  shall  he  find  faith  on 
the  earth  ?"*  It  would  seem  to  mark  out  a  fierce  conflict  of 
antagonist  principles,  issuing  in  the  almost  total  ejectment 
of  Christianity  ;  so  that,  when  the  day  of  the  second  advent 
is  ushered  in  by  its  august  heraldry,  it  shall  dawn  upon 
blasted  and  blackened  scenery,  and  discover  the  mass  of 
mankind  carrying  on,  amid  demolished  temples  and  dese- 
crated Bibles,  the  orgies  of  a  dark  and  desperate  revelry. 
And  knowing  that  such  is  the  tenor  of  prophecy,  and  gather- 
ing from  many  and  infallible  signs  that  already  has  the  war- 
tug  begun,  we  warn  you,  and  beseech  you,  with  all  the  veins 
of  our  heart,  that  ye  be  on  your  guard  against  the  inroads 
of  scepticism.  We  speak  peculiarly  to  the  young,  the  young 
men  who  throng  this  chapel,  and  who,  in  the  intercourses 
of  life,  will  meet  with  many  who  lie  in  wait  to  deceive.  It 
is  not  possible  that  you  should  mix  much  with  the  men  of 
this  liberal  and  libertine  age,  and  not  hear  insinuations,  either 
more  or  less  direct,  thrown  out  against  the  grand  and  saving 
tenets  of  Christianity.  You  cannot,  even  by  the  exercise  of 
the  most  godly  circumspection,  keep  yourselves  wholly  at  a 
distance  from  the  sarcasms  or  sophisms  of  insidious  and  pes- 
tilent teachers.      The    enemy  is  ever  on  the  watch;    and, 

*  Luke,  18  :  8. 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  271 

adapting  himself  to  the  various  dispositions  and.  circumstan- 
ces of  those  whom  he  seeks  to  entangle,  can  address  the  illi- 
terate with  a  hollow  jest,  and  assail  the  educated  with  a  well- 
turned,  objection.  Oh,  I  could  tremble  for  those,  who,  blind  to 
the  weakness  which  is  naturally  the  portion  of  our  race,  and 
rashly  confident  in  a  strength  to  which  the  fallen  have  no 
jot  of  pretension,  adventure  themselves  now  upon  the  sea  of 
life,  and  go  forth  into  a  world  where  must  often  be  encoun- 
tered temptations  to  think  lightly  of  the  faith  of  their  fathers. 
Oh,  I  say,  I  could  tremble  for  them.  If  any  amongst  you — I 
speak  it  with  all  affection,  and  from  the  knowledge  which 
positions  in  life  have  enabled  me  to  form  of  the  progress  of 
youthful  infidelity — if  any  amongst  you  enter  the  busy 
scenes  of  society,  with  an  overweening-  confidence  in  your 
own  capacities,  with  a  lofty  opinion  of  the  powers  of  reason, 
and  with  a  hardy  persuasion  that  there  is  nerve  enough  in 
the  mind  to  grapple  with  divine  mysteries,  and  vigor  enough 
to  discover  truth  for  itself — if,  in  short,  you,  the  weak,  shall 
say  we  are  strong — then  I  fear  for  you,  far  more  than  I  can 
tell,  that  you  may  fall  an  easy  prey  to  some  champion  of 
heretical  error,  and  give  ready  ear  to  the  flattering  schemes 
of  the  worshipers  of  intellect ;  and  that  thus  a  mortal  blight 
shall  desecrate  the  buds  of  early  promise,  and  eternity  frown 
on  you  with  all  the  cheerlessness  which  it  wears  to  those  who 
despise  the  blood  of  atonement,  and  you — the  children,  it 
may  be,  of  pious  parents,  over  whose  infancy  a  godly  father 
hath  watched,  and  whose  young  years  have  been  guarded  by 
the  tender  solicitudes  of  a  righteous  mother — you  may  win 
to  yourselves  a  heritage  of  shame  and  confusion,  and  go 
down,  at  the  judgment,  into  the  pit  of  the  unbelieving  and 
scornful.  Better,  infinitely  better  would  it  have  been,  that 
your  parents  had  seen  you  coffined  and  sepulchred,  ere  as 
yet  ye  knew  evil  from  good,  than  that  they  should  have 
nursed  you,  and  nurtured  you,  to  swell,  in  later  days,  the 
ranks  of  the  apostate.  Be  admonished,  by  the  subject  which 
we  have  this  night  discussed,  to  distrust  yourselves,  and  to 
depend  on  a  higher  teaching  than  human.  Difficulties  there 
are  in  the  Bible  :  but  they  ought  rather  to  assure,  than  make 


272  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.      I 

you  doubtful  of,  the  divinity  of  its  origin.  And  if  you  are 
assailed  with  sceptical  objections  which  you  are  unable  to 
answer,  have  the  candor  and  modesty  to  suspect  that  a 
straightforward  and  sufficient  answer  there  may  be,  though 
you  have  not  the  penetration  to  discover  it.  Lay  not  the 
blame  on  the  deficiencies  of  Christianity,  when  it  may  pos- 
sibly lie  in  the  deficiencies  of  your  own  information.  The 
argument  was  never  framed  against  the  truth  of  our  religion, 
which  has  not  been  completely  taken  off,  and  triumphantly 
refuted.  Hesitate,  therefore,  before  you  conclude  a  sceptic  in 
the  right,  just  because  you  are  not  able  to  prove  him  in  the 
wrong.  We  give  you  this  advice,  simply  and  affectionately. 
We  see  your  danger,  and  we  long  for  your  souls.  Bear  with 
us  yet  a  moment.  We  would  not  weary  you  :  but  speaking 
on  the  topic  of  "  things  hard  to  be  understood,"  we  feel  com- 
pelled to  dwell,  at  some  length,  on  the  scepticism  of  the  age. 
I  can  never  dare  answer,  when  I  stand  up  in  this  holy  place, 
and  speak  to  you  on  the  truths  of  our  religion,  that  I  address 
not  some  who  throw  on  these  truths  habitual  contempt,  who 
count  Christianity  the  plaything  of  children,  invented  by  im- 
posture, and  cradled  in  ignorance.  And  if  I  knew  that  even 
now  there  were  such  amongst  you  ;  if  they  were  pointed  out 
to  me,  so  that  I  might  stand  face  to  face  with  the  despisers 
of  our  Lord — the  thunder,  the  sackcloth  of  hair,  the  worm 
that  dies  not,  the  fire  that  is  not  quenched — should  I  array 
against  them  these  terrible  things,  and  turn  upon  them  the 
battery  of  the  denunciations  of  God's  wrath  ?  Alas,  alas,  I 
should  have  no  moral  hold  on  them  with  all  this  apparatus 
of  wo  and  destruction.  They  might  wrap  themselves  up  in 
their  scepticism.  They  might  tell  me  they  had  read  too 
much,  and  learned  too  much,  to  be  scared  by  the  trickeries 
of  priestcraft :  and  thus,  by  denying  the  authority  of  Scrip- 
ture, they  would  virtually  blunt  all  my  weapons  of  attack, 
and  show  themselves  invulnerable,  because  they  had  made 
themselves  insensible.  There  is  nothing  that  the  minister 
could  do,  save  that  which  Elisha  the  prophet  did,  when 
speaking  with  Hazael  :  "  he  settled  his  countenance  stedfast- 
ly,  until  he  was  ashamed  :  and  the  man  of  God  wept."*  Who 

*  2  Kings,  8  :  10. 


THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE.  275 

<*ould  do  otherwise  than  weep  over  the  spectacle  of  talents, 
and  hopes,  and  affections,  tainted  with  the  leprous  spots  of 
moral  decay,  the  spectacle  of  a  blighted  immortality,  the 
spectacle — a  glimpse  of  which  must  almost  convulse  with 
amazement  the  glorious  ranks  of  the  celestial  world— that  of 
a  being  whom  Christ  purchased  with  his  blood,  whom  the 
Almighty  hath  invited,  yea  besought,  to  have  mercy  upon 
himself,  turning  into  jest  the  messages  of  the  Gospel,  deny- 
ing the  divinity  of  the  Lord  his  Redeemer,  or  building  up, 
with  the  shreds  and  fragments  of  human  reason,  a  baseless 
structure,  which,  like  the  palace  of  ice,  shall  resolve  itself 
suddenly  into  a  tumultuous  flood,  bearing  away  the  inha- 
bitant, a  struggling  thing,  but  a  lost  1  Yea,  if  I  knew  there 
were  one  amongst  you  who  had  surrendered  himself  to  the 
lies  of  an  ensnaring  philosophy,  then,  although  I  should  feel, 
that,  perhaps  even  whilst  I  speak,  he  is  pitying  my  creduli- 
ty, or  ridiculing  my  fanaticism,  I  would  not  suffer  him  to 
depart  without  calling  on  the  congregation  to  baptize  him, 
as  it  were,  with  their  tears  ;  and  he  should  be  singled  out — 
oh,  not  for  rebuke,  not  for  contempt,  not  for  anger — but  as 
more  deserving  to  be  wept  over  and  wailed  over  than  the 
poorest  child  of  human  calamity,  more  worthy  of  the  agonies 
of  mortal  sympathy  than  he  who  eats  the  bitterest  bread  of 
afflictionj  and  in  whose  ear  ring  mournfully  the  sleepless 
echoes  of  a  funeral  bell.  Yea,  and  he  should  not  leave  the 
sanctuary  till  we  had  told  him,  that,  though  there  be  in  the 
Bible  "  things  hard  to  be  understood,"  there  is  one  thing 
beautifully  plain,  and  touchingly  simple  :  and  that  is,  that 
"  the  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  cleanseth  us  from  all  sin."*  So 
that  it  is  not  yet  too  late  :  the  blasphemer,  the  scorner,  the  in- 
fidel— oh,  the  fire  is  not  yet  falling,  and  the  earth  is  not  yet 
opening — let  him  turn  unto  the  Lord,  and  confess  his  iniqui- 
ty, and  cry  for  pardon,  and  a  sweep  of  joy  from  the  angels' 
harp-strings  shall  tell  out  the  astounding  fact,  that  he  is  no 
longer  a  stranger  and  foreigner,  but  a  fellow-citizen  with  the 
saints,  and  of  the  household  of  God. 

*  1  John,  1  :  7. 
35 


274  THE    DIFFICULTIES    OF    SCRIPTURE* 

But  we  hasten  to  a  conclusion.  We  again  press  upon  all 
of  you  the  importance  of  reading  the  Bible  with  prayer.  And 
whilst  the  consciousness  that  Scripture  contains  "  things. 
hard  to  be  understood"  should  bring  us  to  its  study  in  a  de- 
pendent and  humble  temper,  the  thought,  that  what  we  know 
not  now  we  shall  know  hereafter,  should  make  each  diffi- 
culty, as  we  leave  it  unvanquished,  minister  to  our  assurance 
that  a  wider  sphere  of  being,  a  nearer  vision,  and  mightier 
faculties,  await  us  when  the  second  advent  of  the  Lord 
winds  up  the  dispensation.  Thus  should  the  mysteries  of  the 
Bible  teach  us,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  our  nothingness, 
and  our  greatness  ;  producing  humility,  and  animating  hope. 
I  bow  before  these  mysteries.  I  knew  that  I  should  find,  and 
I  pretend  not  to  remove,  them.  But  whilst  I  thus  prostrate 
myself,  it  is  with  deep  gladness  and  exultation  of  spirit. 
God  would  not  have  hinted  the  mystery,  had  he  not  design- 
ed hereafter  to  explain.  And,  therefore,  are  my  thoughts  on 
a  far-off  home,  and  rich  things  are  around  me,  and  the  voices 
of  many  harpers,  and  the  shinings  of  bright  constellations, 
and  the  clusters  of  the  cherub  and  the  seraph  ;  and  a  whis- 
per, which  seems  not  of  this  earth,  is  circulating  through  the 
soul,  "  Now  we  see  through  a  glass  darkly,  but  then  face  to 
face ;  now  I  know  in  part,  but  then  shall  I  know  even  as 
also  I  am  known."*  May  God  grant  unto  all  of  us  to  be  both 
abased  and  quickened  by  those  things  in  the  Bible  which 
are  "  hard  to  be  understood." 

*  1  Corinthians,  13  :  12, 


SERMONS 


PREACHED 


BEFORE   THE   UNIVERSITY   OF   CAMBRIDGE. 


February,  1836. 


The  Author  begs  to  state  that  he  prints  these  Sermons  in  com- 
pliance with  the  wish  of  many  Members  of  the  University.  Imme- 
diately after  their  delivery  he  received  an  address  from  the  resident 
Bachelors  and  Undergraduates,  headed  by  the  most  distinguished 
names,  and  numerously  signed,  requesting  their  publication.  The 
same  request  was  also  made  from  other  quarters.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances the  Author  felt  that  he  had  nothing  to  do,  but  to  regret 
that  the  Sermons  were  not  more  deserving  of  the  interest  thus 
kindly  manifested,  and  to  commit  them  at  once  to  the  press. 

Camberwell,  March  10,  1836. 


SERMON  T. 


THE  GREATNESS  AND  CONDESCENSION  OE  GOD. 


"  Thy  kingdom  is  an  everlasting  kingdom,  and  thy  dominion  endureth 
throughout  all  generations.  The  Lord  upholdeth  all  that  fall,  and  lifteth 
up  all  those  that  be  bowed  down." — Psalm  145  :  13,  14. 

What  we  admire  in  these  verses,  is  their  combining-  the 
magnificence  of  unlimited  power  with  the  assiduity  of  unli- 
mited tenderness.  It  is  this  combination  which  men  are 
apt  to  regard  as  well-nigh  incredible,  supposing  that  a  Being 
so  great  as  God  can  never  concern  himself  with  beings  so 
inconsiderable  as  themselves.  Tell  them  that  God  lifteth  up 
those  that  be  bowed  down,  and  they  cannot  imagine  that  his 
kingdom  and  dominion  are  unbounded  ; — or  tell  them,  on 
the  other  hand,  of  the  greatness  of  his  empire,  and  they 
think  it  impossible  that  he  should  uphold  all  that  fall.  If 
you  represent  Deity  as  busied  with  what  they  reckon  insig- 
nificant, the  rapid  impression  is,  that  he  cannot,  at  the  same 
time,  be  equally  attentive  to  what  is  vast ;  and  if  you  exhibit 
him  as  occupied  with  what  is  vast,  there  is  a  sudden  mis- 
giving that  the  insignificant  must  escape  his  observation. 
And  it  is  of  great  importance,  that  men  be  taught  to  view  in 
God  that  combination  of  properties  which  is  affirmed  in  our 
text.  It  is  certain  that  the  greatness  of  God  is  often  turned 
into  an  argument,  by  which  men  would  bring  doubt  on  the 
truths  of  Redemption  and  Providence.  The  unmeasured 
inferiority  of  man  to  his  Maker  is  used  in  proof,  that  so 
costly  a  work  as  that  of  Redemption  can  never  have  been 


278  THE    GREATNESS    AND 

executed  on  our  behalf;  and  that  so  unwearied  a  watchful- 
ness as  that  of  Providence  can  never  be  engaged  in  our  ser- 
vice. Whereas,  no  reason  whatever  can  be  derived  from 
our  confessed  insignificance,  against  our  being  the  objects 
whether  of  Redemption  or  of  Providence — seeing  it  is  equally 
characteristic  of  Deity,  to  attend  to  the  inconsiderable  and 
to  the  great,  to  extend  his  dominion  throughout  all  genera- 
tions, and  to  lift  up  those  that  be  bowed  down. 

It  is  on  this  truth  we  would  employ  our  present  discourse, 
endeavoring  to  prove,  that  human  insignificance,  as  set  in 
contrast  with  divine  greatness,  furnishes  no  argument  against 
the  doctrine  of  our  Redemption,  and  none  against  that  of  an 
universal  Providence. 

Now  a  man  will  consider  the  heavens,  the  work  of  God's 
fingers,  the  moon  and  the  stars  which  he  hath  ordained, 
and  he  will  perceive  that  the  earth  on  which  we  dwell  is 
but  the  solitary  unit  of  an  innumerable  multitude.  It  ap- 
pears to  him  as  though,  if  this  globe  were  suddenly  annihi- 
lated, it  would  scarcely  be  missed  from  the  firmament,  and 
leave  no  felt  vacancy  in  the  still  crowded  fields  of  the  hea- 
vens. And  if  our  earth  be  thus  so  insignificant  an  unit  that 
its  abstraction  would  not  disturb  the  splendors  and  harmo- 
nies of  the  universe,  how  shall  we  think  that  God  hath  done 
so  wondrous  a  thing  for  its  inhabitants  as  to  send  his  own 
Son  to  die  in  their  stead  1  Thus  an  argument  is  attempted 
to  be  drawn  from  the  insignificance  of  man  to  the  improba- 
bility of  Redemption  ;  one  verse  of  our  text  is  set  against 
the  other ;  and  the  confessed  fact,  that  God's  dominion  is 
throughout  all  generations,  is  opposed  to  the  alleged  fact, 
that  he  gave  his  own  Son  that  he  might  lift  up  the  fallen. 

But  it  ought  at  least  to  be  remembered  that  man  was  God's 
workmanship,  made  after  his  image,  and  endowed  with  pow- 
ers which  fitted  him  for  lofty  pursuits.  The  human  race  may 
or  may  not  be  insignificant.  We  know  nothing  of  the  orders 
of  intelligence  which  stretch  upwards  between  ourselves  and 
God  ;  and  we  are  therefore  incompetent  to  decide  what  place 
we  occupy  in  the  scale  of  creation.  But  at  the  least  we  know, 
independently  of  Revelation,  that  a  magnificent  scene  was 


CONDESCENSION    OE    GOD.  279 

oppointed  for  our  dwelling- ;  and  that,  when  God  reared  a 
home  for  man,  he  built  it  of  the  sublime  and  the  beautiful, 
and  lavished  alike  his  might  aud  his  skill  on  the  furniture 
of  its  chambers.  No  one  can  survey  the  works  of  nature,  and 
not  perceive  that  God  has  some  regard  for  the  children  of 
men,  however  fallen  and  polluted  they  may  be.  And  if  God 
manifest  a  regard  for  us  in  temporal  things,  it  must  be  far 
from  incredible  that  he  would  do  the  same  in  spiritual- 
There  can  be  nothing  fairer  than  the  expectation,  that  he 
would  provide  for  our  well-being  as  moral  and  accountable 
creatures,  with  a  care  at  least  equal  to  that  exhibited  towards 
us  in  our  natural  capacity.  So  that  it  is  perfectly  credible 
that  God  would  do  something  on  behalf  of  the  fallen  ;  and 
then  the  question  is,  whether  any  thing  less  than  Redemp- 
tion through  Christ  would  be  of  worth  and  of  efficacy?  It  is 
certain  that  we  cannot  conceive  any  possible  mode,  except 
the  revealed  mode  through  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  in  which 
God  could  be  both  just  and  the  justifier  of  sinners.  Reckon 
and  reason  as  we  will,  we  can  sketch  out  no  plan  by  which 
transgressors  might  be  saved,  the  divine  attributes  honored, 
and  yet  Christ  not  have  died.  So  far  as  we  have  the  power 
of  ascertaining,  man  must  have  remained  unredeemed,  had 
he  not  been  redeemed  through  the  Incarnation  and  Cruci- 
fixion. And  if  it  be  credible  that  God  would  effectively  inter- 
pose on  man's  behalf:  and  if  the  only  discoverable  method 
in  which  lie  could  thus  interpose,  be  that  of  Redemption 
through  the  sacrifice  of  his  Son ;  what  becomes  of  the  al- 
leged incredibility,  founded  on  the  greatness  of  God  as  con- 
trasted with  the  insignificance  of  man  1  We  do  not  depre- 
ciate the  wonders  of  the  interference.  We  will  go  all  lengths 
in  proclaiming  it  a  prodigy  which  confounds  the  most  mas- 
terful, and  in  pronouncing  it  a  mystery  whose  depths  not 
even  angels  can  fathom,  that,  for  the  sake  of  beings  inconsi- 
derable as  ourselves,  there  should  have  been  acted  out  an 
arrangement  which  brought  Godhead  into  flesh,  and  gave 
up  the  Creator  to  ignominy  and  death.  But  the  greatness  of 
the  wonder  furnishes  no  just  ground  for  its  disbelief.  There 


280  THE    GREATNESS    AND 

low,  and  God  so  high,  no  such  work  can  have  been  wrought 
as  the  Redemption  of  our  race.  We  are  certain  that  we  are 
cared  for  in  our  temporal  capacity  ;  and  we  conclude,  there- 
fore, that  we  cannot  have  been  neglected  in  our  eternal. 
And  then — rinding  that,  unless  redeemed  through  the  sacri- 
fice of  Christ,  there  is  no  supposable  method  of  human  deli- 
verance— it  is  not  the  brightness  of  the  moon  as  she  travels 
in  her  lustre,  and  it  is  not  the  array  of  stars  which  are  mar- 
shalled on  the  firmament,  that  shall  make  us  deem  it  incredi- 
ble that  God  would  give  his  Son  for  our  rescue  :  rather, 
since  moon  and  stars  light  up  man's  home,  they  shall  do 
nothing  but  assure  us  of  the  Creator's  loving-kindness  ;  and 
thus  render  it  a  thing  to  be  believed — though  still  amazing) 
still  stupendous — that  He  whose  kingdom  is  an  everlasting 
kingdom,  and  whose  dominion  endureth  throughout  all  ge- 
nerations, should  have  made  himself  to  be  sin  for  us,  that 
He  might  uphold  all  that  fall,  and  lift  up  all  those  that  be 
bowed  down. 

But  it  is  in  regard  to  the  doctrine  of  an  universal  Provi- 
dence that  men  are  most  ready  to  raise  objections,  from  the 
greatness  of  God  as  contrasted  with  their  own  insignificance. 
They  cannot  believe,  that  he  who  is  so  mighty  as  to  rule 
the  heavenly  hosts  can  condescend  to  notice  the  wants  of  the 
meanest  of  his  creatures ;  and  thus  they  deny  to  him  the 
combination  of  properties  asserted  in  our  text,  that,  whilst 
possessed  of  unlimited  empire,  he  sustains  the  feeble  and 
raises  the  prostrate. 

We  shall  not  stay  to  expose  the  falseness  of  an  opinion 
which  has  sometimes  found  advocates,  that,  having  created 
this  world,  God  left  it  to  itself,  and  bestows  no  thought  on  its 
concerns.  But  whilst  few  would  hold  the  opinion  in  the  ex- 
tent thus  announced,  many  would  limit  the  divine  Provi- 
dence, and  thus  take  from  the  doctrine  its  great  beauty  and 
comfort.  It  is  easy  and  common  to  represent  it  as  incompa- 
tible with  the  confessed  grandeur  of  our  Maker,  that  he 
should  busy  himself  with  the  concerns  of  the  poorest  of  his 
creatures  :  but  such  reasoning  betrays  ignorance  as  to  what 
it  is  in  which  greatness  consists.    It  may  be  that,  amongst 


CONDESCENSION    OF    GOD.  281 

finite  beings,  it  is  not  easy,  and  perhaps  not  possible,  that  at- 
tention to  what  is  minute,  or  comparatively  unimportant, 
should  be  combined  with  attention  to  things  of  vast  moment. 
But  we  never  reckon  it  an  excellence  that  there  is  not,  or 
cannot  be,  this  union.  On  the  contrary,  we  should  declare 
that  man  at  the  very  summit  of  true  greatness,  who  proved 
himself  able  to  unite  what  had  seemed  incompatible.  If  a 
man,  for  example,  be  a  great  statesman,  and  the  manage- 
ment of  a  vast  empire  be  delivered  into  his  hands,  we  can 
scarcely  expect  that,  amid  the  multiplicity  of  mighty  affairs 
which  solicit  his  attention,  he  should  find  time  for  the  duties 
of  more  ordinary  life.  We  feel  that,  engrossed  with  occupa- 
tions of  overwhelming  importance,  it  is  hardly  possible  that 
he  should  be  assiduous  in  the  instruction  of  his  children,  or 
the  inspection  of  his  servants,  or  the  visiting  and  relieving 
his  distressed  fellow-men.  But  we  never  feel  that  his  great- 
ness would  be  diminished,  if  he  were  thus  assiduous.  We 
are  ready,  on  the  contrary,  to  admit  that  we  should  give 
him,  in  a  higher  degree  than  ever,  our  respect  and  admira- 
tion, if  we  knew  that,  whilst  he  had  his  eye  on  every  wheel 
in  the  machinery  of  government,  and  his  comprehensive 
mind  included  all  that  had  a  bearing  on  the  well-being  of 
the  empire,  he  discharged  with  exemplary  fidelity  every  re- 
lative duty,  and  entered  with  as  much  assiduousness  into 
all  that  concerned  his  neighbors  and  dependents,  as  though 
he  had  not  to  extend  his  carefulness  over  the  thousand  de- 
partments of  a  complicated  system.  What  would  be  thought 
of  that  man's  estimate  of  greatness,  who  should  reckon  it  de- 
rogatory to  the  statesman  that  he  thus  combined  attention  to 
the  inconsiderable  with  attention  to  the  stupendous ;  and 
who  should  count  it  inconsistent  with  the  loftiness  of  his 
station,  that,  amid  duties  as  arduous  as  faithfully  discharged, 
he  had  an  ear  for  the  prattle  of  children,  and  an  eye  for  the 
interests  of  the  friendless,  and  a  heart  for  the  sufferings  of 
the  destitute?  Would  there  not  be  a  feeling,  mounting  al- 
most to  veneration,  towards  the  ruler  who  should  prove  him- 
self equal  to  the  superintending  every  concern  of  an  empire, 
and  who  could  yet  give  a  personal  attention  to  the  wants  of 
36 


282  THE     GREATNESS    AND 

many  of  the  poorest  of  its  families;  and  who,  whilst  gather- 
ing within  the  compass  of  an  ample  intelligence  every  ques- 
tion of  foreign  and  home  policy,  protecting  the  commerce;, 
maintaining  the  honor,  and  fostering  the  institutions  of  the 
state,  could  minister  tenderly  at  the  bed-side  of  sickness,  and 
hearken  patiently  to  the  tale  of  calamity,  and  be  as  active 
for  the  widow  and  the  orphan,  as  though  his  whole  business 
were  to  lighten  the  pressure  of  domestic  affliction  ? 

We  can  appeal,  then,  to  your  own  notions  of  true  great- 
ness, for  a  refutation  of  the  common  arguments  against  the 
Providence  of  God.  We  know  not  why  that  should  be  dero- 
gatory to  the  majesty  of  the  Ruler  of  the  universe,  which,  by 
the  general  confession,  would  add  immeasurably  to  the  ma- 
jesty of  one  of  the  earth's  potentates.  And  if  we  should  rise 
in  our  admiration  and  applause  of  a  statesman,  or  sovereign^ 
in  proportion  as  he  showed  himself  capable  of  attending  to 
things  comparatively  petty  and  insignificant,  without  ne- 
glecting the  grand  and  momentous,  certainly  we  are  bound 
to  apply  the  same  principle  to  our  Maker — to  own  it,  that  isr 
essential  to  his  greatness,  that,  whilst  marshalling  planets 
and  ordering  the  motions  of  all  worlds  throughout  the  sweep 
of  immensity,  he  should  yet  feed  "the  young  ravens  that 
call  upon  him,"  and  number  the  very  hairs  of  our  heads ; 
essential,  in  short,  that,  whilst  his  kingdom  is  an  everlasting 
kingdom,  and  his  dominion  endureth  throughout  all  genera- 
tions, he  should  uphold  all  that  fall,  and  raise  up  those  that 
are  bowed  down. 

We  would  add  to  this,  that  objections  against  the  doctrine 
of  God's  Providence  are  virtually  objections  against  the  great 
truths  of  creation.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  this  or  that  ephe- 
meral thing,  the  tiny  tenant  of  a  leaf  or  a  bubble,  is  too  in- 
significant to  be  observed  by  God ;  and  that  it  is  absurd  to 
think  that  the  animated  point,  whose  existence  is  a  second , 
occupies  any  portion  of  those  inspections  which  have  to 
spread  themselves  over  the  revolutions  of  planets,  and  the 
movements  of  angels?  Then  to  what  authorship  are  we  to 
refer  this  ephemeral  thing  ?  We  subject  it  to  the  powers  of 
the  microscope,  and  are  amazed,  perhaps,  at  observing  its 


CONDESCENSION    OF    GOD-  283 

exquisite  symmetries  and  adornments,  with  what  skill  it  has 
been  fashioned,  with  what  glory  it  has  been  clothed  :  but  we 
find  it  said  that  it  is  dishonoring-  to  God  to  suppose  him  care- 
ful or  observant  of  this  insect ;  and  then  our  difficulty  is, 
who  made,  who  created  this  insect  1  I  know  not  what  there 
can  be  too  inconsiderable  for  the  providence,  if  it  have  not 
been  too  inconsiderable  for  the  creation,  of  God.  What  it 
was  not  unworthy  of  God  to  form,  it  cannot  be  unworthy  of 
God  to  preserve.  Why  declare  any  thing  excluded  by  its  in- 
significance from  his  watchfulness,  which  could  not  have 
been  produced  but  by  his  power?  Thus  the  universal  Pro- 
vidence of  God  is  little  more  than  an  inference  from  the  truth 
of  his  being  the  universal  Creator.  And  men  may  speak  of 
the  littleness  of  this  or  that  creature,  and  ask  how  we  can  be- 
lieve that  the  animalcule,  scarce  perceptible  as  it  floats  by  us 
on  the  evening  breeze,  is  observed  and  cared  for  by  that 
Being,  inaccessible  in  his  sublimity,  who  "  sitteth  upon  the 
circle  of  the  earth,  and  the  inhabitants  thereof  are  as  grass- 
hoppers :"  but  we  ask  in  reply,  whether  or  no  it  be  God  who 
gave  its  substance  and  animation  to  this  almost  invisible 
atom  ;  and  unless  they  can  point  out  to  us  another  creator, 
we  shall  hold  that  it  must  be  every  way  worthy  of  God,  that 
he  should  turn  all  the  watchfulness  of  a  guardian  on  the 
work  of  his  own  hands — for  it  cannot  be  more  true,  that,  as 
universal  Creator,  he  has  such  power  that  his  dominion  en- 
dureth  throughout  all  generations,  than  that,  as  universal 
sustainer,  he  has  such  carefulness  for  whatever  he  hath 
formed,  that  he  upholdeth  them  that  fall,  and  raiseth  up  all 
that  are  bowed  down. 

But  up  to  this  point,  we  have  been  rather  engaged  with 
removing  objections  against  the  doctrine  of  God's  providence, 
than  with  examining  that  doctrine,  as  it  may  be  derived  from 
our  text.  In  regard  to  the  doctrine  itself,  it  is  evident  that 
nothing  can  happen  in  any  spot  of  the  universe  which  is  not 
known  to  him  who  is  emphatically  the  Omniscient.  But  it  is 
far  more  than  the  inspection  of  an  ever  vigilant  observer 
which  God  throws  over  the  concerns  of  creation.  It  is  not 
merely  that  nothing  can  occur  without  the  knowledge  of  our 


284 


THE    GREATNESS    AND 


Maker :  it  is  that  nothing  can  occur,  but  by  either  his  ap- 
pointment or  permission.  We  say  either  his  appointment  or 
permission — for  we  know,  that,  whilst  he  ordereth  all  things, 
both  in  heaven  and  earth,  there  is  much  which  he  allows  to 
be  done,  but  which  cannot  be  referred  directly  to  his  au- 
thorship. It  is  in  this  sense  that  his  Providence  has  to  do 
with  what  is  evil,  overruling  it  so  that  it  becomes  subser- 
vient to  the  march  of  his  purposes.  The  power  that  is  exerted 
over  the  waters  of  the  ocean,  is  exerted  also  over  the  more 
boisterous  waves  of  rebellion  and  crime  ;  and  God  saith  to 
the  one,  as  to  the  other,  "  hitherto  shall  ye  come  and  no  fur- 
ther." And  as  to  actions  and  occurrences  of  an  opposite  de- 
scription, such  as  are  to  be  reckoned  good  and  not  evil — can 
it  be  denied  that  Providence  extends  to  all  these,  and  is  inti- 
mately concerned  with  their  production  and  performance  ? 
It  must  ever  be  remembered  that  God  is  the  first  cause,  and 
that  upon  the  first  all  secondary  depend.  We  are  apt  to  forget 
this,  though  unquestionably  a  self-evident  principle,  and  then 
we  easily  lose  ourselves  in  a  wide  labyrinth,  and  are  per- 
plexed by  the  multiplicities  of  agency  with  which  we  seem 
surrounded. 

But  how  beautifully  simple  does  every  thing  appear,  when 
we  trace  one  hand  in  all  that  occurs.  And  this  we  are 
bound  to  do,  if  we  would  allow  its  full  range  to  the  doctrine 
of  God's  providence.  It  is  God  whose  energies  are  extended 
through  earth,  and  sea,  and  air,  causing  those  unnumbered 
and  beneficial  results  which  we  ascribe  to  nature.  It  is  God 
by  whom  all  those  contingencies  which  seem  to  us  fortuitous 
and  casual  are  directed,  so  that  events,  brought  round  by 
what  men  count  accident,  proceed  from  divine,  and  there- 
fore irreversible  appointment.  It  is  God  by  whom  the  hu- 
man will  is  secretly  inclined  towards  righteousness ;  and 
thus  there  is  not  wrought  a  single  action  such  as  God  can 
approve,  to  whose  performance  God  hath  not  instigated.  It 
is  God  from  whom  come  those  many  interpositions,  which 
every  one  has  to  remark  in  the  course  of  a  long  life,  when 
dangers  are  averted,  fears  dispersed,  and  sorrows  removed. 
It  is  God,  who,  acting  through  the  instrumentality  of  various, 


CONDESCENSION    OF    OOP.  285 

and,  to  all  appearance,  conflicting  causes,  keeps  together  the 
discordant  elements  of  society,  and  prevents  the  whole  frame- 
work of  civil  institutions  from  being  rapidly  dislocated.  It 
is  God — but  why  attempt  to  enumerate  ?  Where  is  the 
creature  which  God  does  not  sustain  ?  where  is  the  solitude 
which  God  does  not  fill ;  where  is  the  want  which  God  does 
not  supply?  where  is  the  motion  which  God  does  not  direct? 
where  is  the  action  which  God  does  not  overrule  ?  If,  ac- 
cording to  the  words  of  the  psalmist,  we  could  ascend  up  to 
heaven,  and  make  our  bed.  in  hell ;  if  we  could  take  the 
wings  of  the  morning,  and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  sea  ;  in  all  this  enormous  travel,  in  this  journey  across 
the  fields  of  unlimited  space,  we  could  never  reach  the  lone- 
ly spot  at  which  Deity  was  not  present  as  an  upholder  and 
guardian  ;  never  find  the  lonely  world,  no,  nor  the  lonely 
scene  on  any  one  of  those  globes  with  which  immensity  is 
strewed,  which  was  not  as  strictly  watched  by  the  ever 
wakeful  eye  of  Omniscience,  as  though  every  where  else  the 
universe  were  a  void,  and  this  the  alone  home  of  life  and 
intelligence.  We  have  an  assurance  which  nothing  can 
shake,  because  derived  from  the  confessed  nature  of  God- 
head, that,  in  all  the  greatness  of  his  Almightiness,  our  Ma- 
ker is  perpetually  passing  from  star  to  star,  and  from  system 
to  system,  that  he  may  observe  what  is  needed  by  every  or- 
der of  being,  and  minister  supply — and  yet  not  passing  ;  for 
he  is  always  present,  present  as  much  at  one  moment  as  at 
another,  and  in  one  world  as  in  another  immeasurably  dis- 
tant ;  and  covering  with  the  wing  of  his  Providence  what- 
ever he  hath  formed,  and  whatever  he  hath  animated. 

And  if  we  bring  our  thoughts  within  narrower  compass, 
and  confine  them  to  the  world  appointed  for  men's  dwelling, 
it  is  a  beautiful  truth  that  there  cannot  be  the  creature  so  in- 
significant, the  care  so  inconsiderable,  the  action  so  unim- 
portant, as  to  be  overlooked  by  Him  from  whom  we  draw 
being.  I  know  that  it  is  not  the  monarch  alone,  at  the  head 
of  his  tribes  and  provinces,  who  is  observed  by  the  Almigh- 
ty ;  and  that  it  is  not  only  at  some  great  crisis  in  life,  that  an 
individual  becomes  an  object  of  the  attention  of  his  Maker. 


28G  THE    GREATNESS    AND 

I  know  rather  that  the  poorest,  the  meanest,  the  most  des- 
pised, shares  with  the  monarch  the  notice  of  the  universal 
Protector ;  and  that  this  notice  is  so  unwearied  and  inces- 
sant, that,  when  he  goes  to  his  daily  toil  or  his  daily  prayer, 
when  he  lies  down  at  night,  or  rises  in  the  morning,  or  ga- 
thers his  little  ones  to  the  scanty  meal,  the  poor  man  is  ten- 
derly watched  by  his  God  ;  and  he  cannot  weep  the  tear 
which  God  sees  not,  nor  smile  the  smile  which  God  notes 
not,  nor  breathe  the  wish  which  God  hears  not.  The  man 
indeed  of  exalted  rank,  on  whom  may  depend  the  move- 
ments of  an  empire,  is  regarded,  with  a  vigilance  which  ne- 
ver knows  suspense,  by  Him  "  who  giveth  salvation  unto 
kings;"  and  the  Lord,  "to  whom  belong  the  shields  of  the 
earth,"  bestows  on  this  man  whatever  wisdom  he  displays, 
and  whatever  strength  he  puts  forth,  and  whatever  success 
he  attains.  But  the  carefulness  of  Deity  is  in  no  sense  en- 
grossed by  the  distinguished  individual ;  but,  just  as  the  re- 
gards which  are  turned  on  this  earth  interfere  not  with  those 
which  pour  themselves  over  far-off  planets  and  distant  sys- 
tems, so,  whilst  the  chieftain  is  observed  and  attended  with 
the  assiduousness  of  what  might  seem  an  undivided  guar- 
dianship, the  very  beggar  is  as  much  the  object  of  divine  in- 
spection and  succor,  as  though,  in  the  broad  sweep  of  ani- 
mated being,  there  were  no  other  to  need  the  sustaining  arm 
of  the  Creator. 

And  this  is  what  we  understand  by  the  providence  of  the 
Almighty.  We  believe  of  this  providence  that  it  extends  it- 
self to  every  household,  and  throws  itself  round  every  indi- 
vidual, and  takes  part  in  every  business,  and  is  concerned 
with  every  sorrow,  and  accessory  to  every  joy.  We  believe 
that  it  encircles  equally  the  palace  and  the  cottage  ;  guiding 
and  upholding  alike  the  poor  and  the  rich ;  ministering  to 
the  king  in  his  councils,  and  to  the  merchant  in  his  com- 
merce, and  to  the  scholar  in  his  study,  and  to  the  laborer  in 
his  husbandry — so  that,  whatever  my  rank  and  occupation, 
at  no  moment  am  I  withdrawn  from  the  eye  of  Deity,  in  no 
lawful  endeavor  am  I  left  to  myself,  in  no  secret  anxiety 
have  I  only  my  own  heart  with  which  I  may  commune. 


CONDESCENSION     OF    GOD.  287 

Oh  !  it  were  to  take  from  God  all  that  is  most  encouraging 
in  his  attributes  and  prerogatives,  if  you  could  throw  doubt 
on  this  doctrine  of  his  universal  providence.  It  is  an  august 
contemplation,  that  of  the  Almighty  as  the  architect  of  crea- 
tion, filling  the  vast  void  with  magnificent  structures.  We 
are  presently  confounded  when  bidden  to  meditate  on  the 
eternity  of  the  Most  High  :  for  it  is  an  overwhelming  truth, 
that  he  who  gave  beginning  to  all  besides  could  have  had 
no  beginning  himself.  And  there  are  other  characteristics 
and  properties  of  Deity,  whose  very  mention  excites  awe, 
and  on  which  the  best  eloquence  is  silence.  But  whilst  the 
universal  providence  of  God  is  to  the  full  as  incomprehen- 
sible as  aught  else  which  appertains  to  Divinity,  there  is  no- 
thing in  it  but  what  commends  itself  to  the  warmest  feelings 
of  our  nature.  And  we  seem  to  have  drawn  a  picture  which 
is  calculated  equally  to  raise  astonishment  and  delight,  to 
produce  the  deepest  reverence  and  yet  the  fullest  confidence, 
when  we  have  represented  God  as  superintending  whatever 
occurs  in  his  infinite  domain — guiding  the  roll  of  every  pla- 
net, and  the  rush  of  every  cataract,  and  the  gathering  of  every 
cloud,  and  the  motion  of  every  will — and  when,  in  order 
that  the  delineation  may  have  all  that  exquisiteness  which 
is  only  to  be  obtained  from  those  home-touches  which  assure 
us  that  we  have  ourselves  an  interest  in  what  is  so  splendid 
and  surprising,  we  add,  that  he  is  with  the  sick  man  on  his 
pallet,  and  with  the  seaman  in  his  danger,  and  with  the 
widow  in  her  agony.  And  what,  after  all,  is  this  combina- 
tion but  that  presented  by  our  text?  If  I  would  exhibit  God 
as  so  attending  to  what  is  mighty  as  not  to  overlook  what  is 
mean,  what  better  can  I  do  than  declare  him  mustering 
around  him  the  vast  army  of  suns  and  constellations,  and  all 
the  while  hearkening  to  every  cry  which  goes  up  from  an 
afflicted  creation— and  is  not  this  the  very  picture  sketched 
by  the  Psalmist,  when,  after  the  sublime  ascription,  "  Thy 
kingdom  is  an  everlasting  kingdom,  and  thy  dominion  en- 
dure th  throughout  all  generations,"  he  adds  the  comforting 
words,  "  the  Lord  upholdeth  all  that  fall,  and  lifteth  up  all 
those  that  be  bowed  down  ?" 


288  THE    GREATNESS    AND 

We  have  only  to  add,  that  the  doctrine  of  a  particular  and 
universal  Providence,  on  which  we  have  insisted,  is  strictly 
derivable  from  the  very  nature  of  God.  We  are  so  accus- 
tomed to  reckon  one  thing  great  and  another  small,  that 
when  we  ascend  to  contemplations  of  Deity,  we  are  apt  to 
forget  that  there  is  not  to  him  that  graduated  scale  which 
there  must  be  to  ourselves.  It  is  to  bring  down  God  to  the 
feebleness  of  our  own  estate,  to  suppose  that  what  is  great  to 
us  must  be  great  to  him,  and  that  what  is  small  to  us  must  be 
small  to  him.  I  know  and  am  persuaded,  that,  dwelling  as 
God  does  in  inaccessible  splendors,  a  world  is  to  him  an 
atom,  and  an  atom  is  to  him  a  world.  He  can  know  no- 
thing of  the  human  distinctions  between  great  and  small— 
so  that  he  is  dishonored,  not  when  all  things  are  reckoned 
as  alike  subject  to  his  inspections,  but  when  some  things  are 
deemed  important  enough,  and  others  too  insignificant,  to 
come  within  the  notice  of  his  providence.  If  he  concern 
himself  with  the  fate  of  an  empire,  but  not  with  the  fall  of  a 
sparrow,  he  must  be  a  being  scarce  removed  from  equality 
with  ourselves  ;  for,  if  he  have  precisely  the  same  scale  by 
which  to  estimate  importance,  the  range  of  his  intelligence 
can  be  little  wider  than  that  of  our  own.  God  is  that  mys- 
terious being,  to  whom  the  only  great  thing  is  himself.  And, 
therefore,  when  "  the  eyes  of  all  wait  upon  "  him,  the  se- 
raph gains  not  attention  by  his  gaze  of  fire,  and  the  insect 
loses  it  not  through  feebleness  of  vision— Archangel,  and 
angel,  and  man,  and  beast,  and  fowl  of  the  air,  and  fish  of 
the  sea,  all  draw  equally  the  regards  of  him,  who,  counting 
nothing  great  but  himself  the  Creator,  can  pass  over,  as  small, 
no  fraction  of  the  creature.  It  is  thus  virtually  the  property 
of  God,  that  he  should  care  for  every  thing,  and  sustain 
every  thing  ;  so  that  we  should  never  behold  a  blade  of 
grass  springing  up  from  the  earth,  nor  hear  a  bird  warble  its 
wild  music,  nor  see  an  infant  slumber  on  its  mother's  breast, 
without  a  warm  memory  that  it  is  through  God,  as  a  God 
of  providence,  that  the  fields  are  enamelled  in  due  season, 
that  every  animated  tribe  receives  its  sustenance,  and  that 
the  successive  generations  of  mankind  arise,  and  flourish, 


CONDESCENSION    OF    GOD.  289 

and  possess  the  earth.  And  never  should  we  think  of  joy 
or  sorrow,  of  things  prosperous  or  adverse,  of  health  or  sick- 
ness, life  or  death,  without  devoutly  believing  that  the  times 
of  every  man  are  in  the  Almighty's  hands  ;  that  nothing 
happens  but  through  the  ordinance  or  permission  of  God  ; 
and  that  the  very  same  Providence  which  guides  the  march- 
ings of  stars,  and  regulates  the  convulsions  of  empires,  is 
tending  at  the  couch  of  the  afflicted,  curtaining  the  sleep, 
and  watching  the  toil,  of  the  earth's  remotest  families. 

We  can  only  desire  and  pray,  in  conclusion,  that  this  great 
truth  might  establish  itself  in  all  our  hearts.  Then  would 
all  undue  anxieties  be  dismissed,  our  plans  be  those  of  pru- 
dence, our  energies  be  rightly  directed  and  strenuously  em- 
ployed, disappointments  would  be  avoided,  and  hope  would 
never  make  ashamed  ;  for  we  should  leave  every  thing, 
small  as  well  as  great,  in  the  hands  of  Him  who  cannot  be 
perplexed  by  multiplicity,  nor  overpowered  by  magnitude  ; 
and  the  result  would  be  that  we  should  enjoy  a  serenity,  no 
more  to  be  broken  by  those  little  cares  which  perpetually 
wrinkle  the  surface,  than  by  those  fierce  storms  which  threat- 
en the  complete  shipwreck  of  peace. 

And  forasmuch  as  we  have  spoken  of  Redemption  as  well 
as  of  Providence,  and  are  now  telling  you  of  security  and 
serenity,  suffer  that  we  remind  you  of  the  simile  by  which 
St.  Paul  has  represented  christian  hope  :  "  Which  hope  we 
have  as  an  anchor  of  the  soul,  both  sure  and  stedfast,  and 
which  entereth  into  that  within  the  vail."  The  anchor  is 
cast  "  within  the  vail,"  whither  Christ  the  forerunner  is  gone 
before.  And  if  hope  be  fixed  upon  Christ,  the  Rock  of  Ages, 
a  rock  rent,  if  we  may  use  the  expression,  on  purpose  that 
there  might  be  a  holding-place  for  the  anchors  of  a  perishing 
world,  it  may  well  come  to  pass  that  we  enjoy  a  calm  as  we 
journey  through  life,  and  draw  near  the  grave.  But  since 
"  other  foundation  can  no  man  lay  than  that  is  laid,"  if  our 
anchor  rest  not  on  this  Rock,  where  is  our  hope,  where  our 
peacefulness  ?  I  know  of  a  coming  tempest — and  would  to 
God  that  the  younger  part,  more  especially,  of  this  audience, 
might  be  stirred  by  its  approach  to  repentance  and  righteous- 


290  THE    GREATNESS    AND    CONDESCENSION    OF    GOD. 

ness  !  I  know  of  a  coming  tempest,  with  which  the  Al- 
mighty shall  shake  terribly  the  earth  ;  the  sea  and  the  waves 
roaring,  and  the  stars  falling  from  the  heavens.  Then  shall 
there  be  a  thousand  shipwrecks,  and  immensity  be  strewed 
with  the  fragments  of  a  stranded  navy.  Then  shall  vessel 
upon  vessel,  laden  with  reason,  and  high  intelligence,  and 
noble  faculty,  be  drifted  to  and  fro,  shattered  and  dismantled, 
and  at  last  thrown  on  the  shore  as  fuel  for  the  burning.  But 
there  are  ships  which  shall  not  founder  in  this  battle  and 
dissolution  of  the  elements.  There  are  ships  which  shall 
be  in  no  peril  whilst  this,  the  last  hurricane  which  is  to 
sweep  our  creation,  confounds  earth,  and  sea,  and  sky  ;  but 
which — when  the  fury  is  overpast,  and  the  light  of  a  morn- 
ing which  is  to  know  no  night  breaks  gloriously  forth — 
shall  be  found  upon  crystal  and  tranquil  waters,  resting 
beautifully  on  their  shadows.  These  are  those  which  have 
been  anchored  upon  Christ.  These  are  those — and  may 
none  refuse  to  join  the  number — who  have  trusted  them- 
selves to  the  Mediator,  who  humbled  himself  that  he  might 
lift  up  all  those  that  are  bowed  down  ;  and  who  have  there- 
fore interest  in  every  promise  made  by  Him,  whose  king- 
doni  is  an  everlasting  kingdom,  and  whose  dominion  endur- 
eth  throughout  all  generations. 


SERMON    II. 


THE  TERMINATION  OF  THE  MEDIATORIAL  KINGDOM 


':  And  when  all  things  shall  be  subdued  unto  Him,  then  shall  the  Son  also 
himself  be  subject  unto  Him  that  put  all  things  under  him,  that  God 
may  be  all  in  all." — I  Corinthians,  15  :  28. 

In  our  last  discourse  we  spoke  of  an  everlasting  kingdom, 
and  of  a  dominion  which  endureth  throughout  all  genera- 
tions. It  will  be  of  a  kingdom  which  must  terminate,  though 
it  appertain  to  a  divine  person,  that  we  shall  have  to  speak 
in  expounding  the  words  of  our  text. 

There  are  two  great  truths  presented  by  this  verse  and  its 
context,  each  deserving  attentive  examination — the  one,  that. 
Christ  is  now  vested  with  a  kingly  authority  which  he  must 
hereafter  resign;  the  other,  that,  as  a  consequence  on  this 
resignation,  God  himself  will  become  all  in  all  to  the  uni- 
verse. We  proceed  at  once  to  the  consideration  of  these 
truths  ;  and  begin  by  observing  the  importance  of  carefully 
distinguishing  between  what  the  Scriptures  affirm  of  the  at- 
tributes, and  what  of  the  offices,  of  the  persons  in  the  Trini- 
ty. In  regard  of  the  attributes,  you  will  find  that  the  em- 
ployed language  marks  perfect  equality;  the  Father,  Son, 
and  Spirit,  being  alike  spoken  of  as  Eternal,  Omniscient,  Om- 
nipotent, Omnipresent.  But  in  regard  of  the  offices,  there  can 
be  no  dispute  that  the  language  indicates  inequality,  and 
that  both  the  Son  and  Spirit  are  represented  as  inferior  to 
the  Father.  This  may  readily  be  accounted  for  from  the  na- 


292  THE     TERMINATION    OF 

ture  of  the  plan  of  redemption.  This  plan  demanded  that  the 
Son  should  humble  himself,  and  assume  our  nature ;  and 
that  the  Spirit  should  condescend  to  be  sent  as  a  renovating 
agent;  whilst  the  Father  was  to  remain  in  the  sublimity  and 
happiness  of  Godhead.  And  if  such  plan  were  undertaken 
and  carried  through,  it  seems  unavoidable,  that,  in  speaking 
of  its  several  parts,  the  Son  and  the  Spirit  should  be  occa- 
sionally described  as  inferior  to  the  Father.  The  offices  be-, 
ing  subordinate,  the  holders  of  those  offices,  though  natural- 
ly equal,  must  sometimes  be  exhibited  as  though  one  were 
superior  to  the  others.  At  one  time  they  may  be  spoken  of 
with  reference  to  their  attributes,  and  then  the  language 
will  mark  perfect  equality ;  at  another,  with  reference  to 
their  offices,  and  then  it  will  indicate  a  relative  inferiority. 

And  it  is  only  by  thus  distinguishing  between  the  attri- 
butes and  the  offices,  that  we  can  satisfactorily  explain  our 
text  and  its  context.  The  apostle  expressly  declares  of  Christ, 
that  he  is  to  deliver  up  his  kingdom  to  the  Father,  and  to 
become  himself  subject  to  the  Father.  And  the  question  na- 
turally proposes  itself,  how  are  statements  such  as  these  to 
be  reconciled  with  other  portions  of  Scripture,  which  speak 
of  Christ  as  an  everlasting  King,  and  declare  his  dominion 
to  be  that  which  shall  not  be  destroyed?  There  is  no  diffi- 
culty in  reconciling  these  apparently  conflicting  assertions, 
if  we  consider  Christ  as  spoken  of  in  the  one  case  as  God,  in 
the  other  as  Mediator.  If  we  believe  him  to  be  God,  we 
know  that  he  must  be,  in  the  largest  sense,  Sovereign  of  the 
universe,  and  that  he  can  no  more  give  up  his  dominion 
than  change  his  nature.  And  then  if  we  regard  him  as  un- 
dertaking the  office  of  Mediator  between  God  and  man,  we 
must  admit  the  likelihood  that  he  would  be  invested,  as  hold- 
ing this  office,  with  an  authority  not  necessarily  permanent, 
which  would  last  indeed  as  long  as  the  office,  but  cease  if 
there  ever  came  a  period  when  the  office  would  itself  be  abo- 
lished. So  that  there  is  no  cause  for  surprise,  nothing  which 
should  go  to  the  persuading  us  that  Christ  is  not  God,  if  we 
find  the  Son  described  as  surrendering  his  kingdom :  we 
have  only  to  suppose  him  then  spoken  of  as  Mediator,  and 


THE    MEDIATORIAL    KINGDOM.  293 

to  examine  whether  there  be  not  a  mediatorial  kingdom, 
which,  committed  to  Christ,  has  at  length  to  be  resigned. 

And  you  cannot  be  acquainted  with  the  scheme  of  our 
Redemption,  and  not  know  that  the  office  of  Mediator  war- 
rants our  supposing  a  kingdom  which  will  be  finally  surren- 
dered. The  grand  design  of  Redemption  has  all  along  been 
the  exterminating  evil  from  the  universe,  and  the  restoring 
harmony  throughout  God's  disorganized  empire.  We  know 
that  God  made  every  thing  good,  and  that  the  creation, 
whether  animate  or  inanimate,  as  it  rose  from  his  hands,  pre- 
sented no  trace  of  imperfection  or  pollution.  But  evil  myste- 
riously gained  entrance,  and,  originating  in  heaven,  spread 
rapidly  to  earth.  And  henceforwards  it  was  the  main  purpose 
of  the  Almighty  to  counteract  evil,  to  obliterate  the  stains 
from  his  workmanship,  and  to  reinstate  and  confirm  the  uni- 
verse in  its  original  purity.  To  effect  this  purpose,  his  own 
Son,  equal  with  himself  in  all  the  attributes  of  Godhead,  un- 
dertook to  assume  human  nature  ;  and  to  accomplish,  in 
working  out  the  reconciliation  of  an  alienated  tribe,  results 
which  should  extend  themselves  to  every  department  of  crea- 
tion. He  was  not  indeed  fully  and  visibly  invested  with  the 
kingly  office,  until  after  his  death  and  resurrection  ;  for  then 
it  was  that  he  declared  to  his  disciples,  "  all  power  is  given 
unto  me  in  heaven  and  earth."  Nevertheless  the  Mediatorial 
kingdom  had  commenced  with  the  commencement  of  human 
guilt  and  misery.  For,  so  soon  as  man  rebelled,  Christ  inter- 
fered on  his  behalf,  and  assumed  the  office  of  his  surety  and 
deliverer.  He  undertook  the  combat  with  the  powers  of  evil, 
and  fought  his  first  battle.  And  afterwards  all  God's  inter- 
course with  the  world  was  carried  on  through  the  Mediator — 
Christ  appearing  in  human  form  to  patriarchs  and  saints, 
and  superintending  the  concerns  of  our  race  with  distinct 
reference  to  the  good  of  his  church. 

But  when,  through  death,  he  had  destroyed  "  him  that  had 
the  power  of  death,"  the  Mediator  became  emphatically  a 
king.  He  "  ascended  up  on  high,  and  led  captivity  captive." 
in  that  very  nature  in  which  he  had  "  borne  our  griefs  and 
carried  our  sorrows."  He  sat  down  at  the  right  hand  of  God, 


594 


THE     TERMINATION    OF 


the  very  person  that  had  been  made  a  curse  for  us;  and 
there  was  "  given  him  a  name  which  is  above  every  name, 
that  at  the  name  of  Jesus  every  knee  should  bow,  of  things 
in  heaven,  and  things  on  earth,  and  things  under  the  earth." 
And  ever  since  he  hath  been  "  head  over  all  things  to  the 
church  ;;'  and  God  has  so  delegated  his  power  to  the  Media- 
tor, that  this  Mediator  has  "  the  keys  of  hell  and  of  death,'' 
and  so  rules  human  affairs  as  to  make  way  for  a  grand  con- 
summation which  creation  yet  expects.  It  is  certainly  the  re- 
presentation of  Scripture,  that  Christ  has  been  exalted  to  a 
throne,  in  recompense  of  his  humiliation  and  suffering;  and 
that,  seated  on  this  throne,  he  governs  all  things  in  heaven 
and  earth.  And  we  call  this  throne  the  mediatorial  throne, 
because  it  was  only  as  Mediator  that  Christ  could  be  exalted  ; 
because,  possessing  essentially  all  power  as  God,  it  could  only 
be  as  God-man  that  he  was  vested  with  dominion.  "  He  must 
reign/'  saith  St.  Paul,  "  until  he  hath  put  all  enemies  under 
his  feet."  The  great  object  for  which  the  kingdom  has  been 
erected,  is,  that  he  who  occupies  the  throne  may  subdue 
those  principalities  and  powers  which  have  set  themselves 
against  the  government  of  God.  Already  have  vast  advances 
been  made  towards  the  subjugation.  But  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world  have  not  yet  become  the  kingdoms  of  our  Lord  and 
his  Christ.  Sin  still  reigns,  and  death  still  reigns,  and  only 
an  inconsiderable  fraction  of  the  human  population  bow  to 
the  sceptre  of  Jesus.  But  we  are  taught  to  expect  a  thorough 
and  stupendous  change.  We  know  from  prophecy  that  a 
time  approaches  when  the  whole  world  shall  be  evange- 
lized ;  when  there  shall  not  be  the  tribe,  no,  nor  the  indivi- 
dual upon  earth,  who  fails  to  love  and  reverence  the  Media- 
tor. Christ  hath  yet  to  set  up  his  kingdom  on  the  wreck  of 
all  human  sovereignty,  and  so  to  display  himself  that  he 
shall  be  universally  adored  as  ':  King  of  kin^s  and  Lord  of 
lords." 

And  when  this  noble  result  is  brought  round,  and  the 
whole  globe  mantled  with  righteousness,  there  will  yet  re- 
main much  to  be  done  ere  the  mediatorial  work  is  complete. 
The  throne  must  be  set  for  judgment ;  the  enactments  of  a 


THE    MEDIATORIAL    KINGDOM  295 

retributive  economy  take  effect ;  the  dead  be  raised,  and  all 
men  receive  the  things  done  in  the  body.  Then  will  evil  be 
finally  expelled  from  the  universe,  and  God  may  again  look 
forth  on  his  unlimited  empire,  and  declare  it  not  defiled  by  a 
solitary  stain.  Then  will  be  "  the  restitution  of  all  things." 
Then  will  it  be  evident  that  the  power  committed  to  Christ 
has  accomplished  the  great  ends  for  which  it  was  entrusted, 
the  overthrow  of  Satan,  the  destruction  of  death,  and  the  ex- 
tirpation of  unrighteousness.  And  if  it  be  the  declaration  of 
Scripture  that  the  Mediator  shall  thus  at  length  master  evil 
under  its  every  form,  and  in  its  every  consequence,  will  not 
this  Mediator  finally  prove  himself  a  king — demonstrating 
not  only  the  possession  of  sovereignty,  but  the  employment 
of  it  to  those  illustrious  purposes  which  were  proposed  by 
God  from  the  foundation  of  the  world  ?  Yes,  we  can  say 
with  St.  Paul,  "  we  see  not  yet  all  things  put  under  him." 
But  we  see  enough  to  assure  us  that  "  him  hath  God  exalt- 
ed as  a  Prince  and  a  Savior."  We  see  enough,  and  we  know 
enough,  to  be  persuaded,  that  there  is  kingdom  within  king- 
dom ;  and  that,  whilst  God  is  still  the  universal  Monarch, 
the  Omnipotent  who  "  telleth  the  number  of  the  stars,"  and 
without  whom  not  even  a  sparrow  falls,  the  Mediator  super- 
intends and  regulates  the  affairs  of  his  church,  and  orders, 
with  absolute  sway,  whatever  respects  the  final  establishment 
of  righteousness  through  creation.  And  therefore  are  we  also 
persuaded,  on  a  testimony  which  cannot  deceive,  that  this 
Mediator  shall  reign  till  he  hath  brought  into  subjection  eve- 
ry adversary  of  God ;  and  that  at  last — death  itself  being 
swallowed  up  in  victory — the  universe,  purged  from  all  pol- 
lution, and  glowing  with  a  richer  than  its  pristine  beauty, 
shall  be  the  evidence  that  there  hath  indeed  been  a  media- 
torial kingdom,  and  that  nothing  could  withstand  the  Media- 
tor's sovereignty. 

Now  it  has  been  our  object,  up  to  this  point  of  our  dis- 
course, to  prove  to  you,  on  scriptural  authority,  that  the  Me- 
diator is  a  king,  and  that  Christ,  as  God-man,  is  invested 
with  a  dominion  not  to  be  confounded  with  that  which  be- 
longs to  him  as  God.    You  are  now  therefore  prepared  for 


296  THE    TERMINATION    OF 

the  question,  whether  Christ  have  not  a  kingdom  which 
must  be  ultimately  resigned.  We  think  it  evident  that,  as 
Mediator,  Christ  has  certain  functions  to  discharge,  which, 
from  their  very  nature,  cannot  be  eternal.  When  the  last  of 
God's  elect  family  shall  have  been  gathered  in,  there  will  be 
none  to  need  the  blood  of  sprinkling,  none  to  require  the  in- 
tercession of  "  an  advocate  with  the  Father."  And  when  the 
last  enemy,  which  is  death,  shall  have  been  destroyed,  that 
great  purpose  of  the  Almighty — the  conquest  of  Satan,  and 
the  extirpation  of  evil — will  be  accomplished  ;  so  that  there 
will  be  no  more  battles  for  the  Mediator  to  fight,  no  more 
adversaries  to  subdue.  And  thus,  if  we  have  rightly  describ- 
ed the  mediatorial  kingdom,  there  is  to  come  a  time  when  it 
will  be  no  longer  necessary;  when,  every  object  for  which 
it  was  erected  having  been  fully  and  finally  attained,  and  no 
possibility  existing  that  evil  may  re-enter  the  universe,  this 
kingdom  may  be  expected  to  cease. 

And  this  is  the  great  consummation  which  we  are  taught 
by  our  text  and  its  context  to  expect.  We  may  not  be  able 
to  explain  its  details,  but  the  outlines  are  sketched  with  bold- 
ness and  precision.  There  has  been  committed  to  Christ,  not 
as  God,  but  as  God-man,  a  kingdom  which,  though  small  in 
its  beginning,  shall  at  length  supersede  every  other.  The 
designs  proposed  in  the  erection  of  this  kingdom,  are  the 
salvation  of  man  and  the  glory  of  God,  in  the  thorough  ex- 
tirpation of  evil  from  the  universe.  These  designs  will  be 
fully  accomplished  at  the  general  judgment ;  and  then,  the 
ends  for  which  the  kingdom  was  erected  having  been  an- 
swered, the  kingdom  itself  is  to  terminate.  Then  shall  the 
Son  of  man,  having  "  put  down  all  rule  and  all  authority 
and  power,"  lay  aside  the  sceptre  of  majesty,  and  take  open- 
ly a  place  subordinate  to  Deity.  Then  shall  all  that  sove- 
reignty which,  for  magnificent  but  temporary  purposes,  has 
been  wielded  by  and  through  the  humanity  of  Christ,  pass 
again  to  the  Godhead  whence  it  was  derived.  Then  shall 
the  Creator,  acting  no  longer  through  the  instrumentality  of 
a  mediator,  assume  visibly,  amid  the  worshipings  of  the 
whole  intelligent  creation,  the  dominion  over  his  infinite  and 


THE     MEDIATORIAL    KINGDOM. 


297 


now  purified  empire,  and  administer  its  every  concern  with- 
out the  intervention  of  one  "  found  in  fashion  as  a  man."  And 
then,  though  as  head  of  his  church,  Christ,  in  human  nature, 
may  always  retain  a  special  power  over  his  people,  and 
though,  as  essentially  divine,  he  must  at  all  times  be  equally 
the  omnipotent,  there  will  necessarily  be  such  a  change  in 
the  visible  government  of  the  universe,  that  the  Son  shall 
seem  to  surrender  all  kingly  authority ;  to  descend  from  his 
throne,  having  made  his  enemies  his  footstool,  and  take  his 
station  amongst  those  who  obey  rather  than  rule ;  and  thus 
shall  be  brought  to  pass  the  saying  that  is  written,  "  the  Son 
also  himself  shall  be  subject  unto  him  that  put  all  things  un- 
der him ;"  and  God,  the  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost,  "  God 
shall  henceforwards  be  all  in  all." 

Now  it  is  upon  this  latter  expression,  indicative  as  it  is  of 
what  we  may  call  the  universal  diffusion  of  Deity,  that  we 
design  to  employ  the  remainder  of  our  time.  We  wish  to  ex- 
amine into  the  truths  involved  in  the  assertion,  that  God  is  to 
be  finally  all  in  all.  It  is  an  assertion  which,  the  more  it  is 
pondered,  the  more  august  and  comprehensive  will  it  appear. 
You  may  remember  that  the  same  expression  is  used  of 
Christ  in  the  Epistle  t,o  the  Colossians— "  Christ  is  all  and  in 
all."  There  is  no  disagreement  between  the  assertions.  In 
the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  St.  Paul  speaks  of  what  takes 
place  under  the  mediatorial  kingdom  ;  whereas  in  that  to 
the  Corinthians,  he  describes  what  will  occur  when  that 
kingdom  shall  have  terminated.  At  present,  whatever  in  the 
divine  government  has  reference  to  this  earth  and  its  inha- 
bitants, is  not  transacted  immediately  by  God,  but  mediately 
through  an  Intercessor,  so  that  Christ  is  all  in  all.  But  here- 
after, the  mediatorial  office  finally  ceasing,  the  administra- 
tion, we  are  assured,  will  be  immediately  with  God,  and 
therefore  will  God  be  all  in  all. 

We  learn  then  from  the  expression  in  question,  however 
unable  we  may  be  to  explain  the  amazing  transition,  that 
there  is  to  be  a  removal  of  the  apparatus  constructed  for  al- 
lowing us  communications  with  Godhead ;  and  that  we  shall 
not  need  those  offices  of  an  Intercessor,  without  which  there 
38 


298  THE    11.  K  Mi  NATION     (11 

could  now  be  no  access  to  our  Maker.  There  is  something 
very  grand  and  animating  in  this  announcement.  It*  we  were 
unfallen  creatures,  we  should  need  no  Mediator.  We  might, 
as  did  Adam,  approach  at  once  the  Creator,  and,  though 
awed  by  his  majesty,  have  no  fears  as  to  our  reception,  and 
experience  no  repulse.  And  therefore,  whilst  we  heartily 
thank  God  for  the  unspeakable  gift  of  his  Son,  Ave  cannot 
but  feel,  that,  so  long  as  we  have  no  access  to  him  except 
through  a  Mediator,  we  have  not  altogether  recovered  our 
forfeited  privileges.  The  mediatorial  office,  independently 
on  which  we  must  have  been  everlastingly  outcasts,  is  evi- 
dence, throughout  the  whole  of  its  continuance,  that  the 
human  race  does  not  yet  occupy  the  place  whence  it  fell. 
But  with  the  termination  of  this  office  shall  be  the  admission 
of  man  into  all  the  privileges  of  direct  access  to  his  Maker, 
Then  shall  he  see  face  to  face  ;  then  shall  he  know  even  as 
also  he  is  known.  There  are  yet.  and  there  must  be,  whilst 
God's  dealings  with  humanity  are  carried  on  through  a  Me- 
diator, separating  distances  between  our  race  and  the  Crea- 
tor, which  exist  not  in  regard  of  other  orders  of  being.  But 
the  descent  of  the  Son  from  the  throne,  to  which  he  was  ex- 
alted in  recompense  of  his  sufferings,  shall  be  the  unfolding 
to  man  the  presence-chamber  in  which  Deity  unveils  his 
effulgence.  In  ceasing  to  have  a  Mediator,  the  last  barrier  is 
taken  down  ;  and  man,  who  had  thrown  himself  to  an  un- 
measured distance  from  God,  passes  into  those  direct  associ- 
ations with  Him  "  that  inhabiteth  eternity,"'  which  can  be 
granted  to  none  but  those  who  never  fell,  or  who,  having 
fallen,  have  been  recovered  from  every  consequence  of 
apostasy. 

And  therefore,  it  is  not  that  we  depreciate,  or  undervalue, 
the  blessedness  of  that  condition  in  which  Christ  is  all  in  all 
to  his  church.  We  cannot  compute  this  blessedness,  and 
we  feel  that  the  best  praises  fall  far  short  of  its  deserts  ;  and 
yet  we  can  believe  of  this  blessedness,  that  it  is  only  prepa- 
ratory to  a  richer  and  a  higher.  Whilst  overwhelmed  with 
the  consciousness  that  I  owe  every  thing  to  a  Mediator,  I 
can  yet  feel  that  this  Mediator  must  lay  aside  his  office  as  no 


THE    MEDIATORIAL    KINGDOM.  299 

longer  necessary,  ere  I  can  stand  in  that  relationship  to 
Deity,  and  possess  that  freedom  of  approach,  which  belong 
to  the  loftiest  and  holiest  in  creation.  To  tell  me  that  I 
should  need  a  Mediator  through  eternity,  were  to  tell  me 
that  I  should  be  in  danger  of  death,  and  at  a  distance  from 
God.  And,  therefore,  in  informing  me  of  the  extinction  of 
that  sovereignty  by  which  alone  I  can  be  rescued,  you  in- 
form me  of  the  restoration  of  all  which  Adam  lost,  and  of 
the  placing  humankind  on  equality  with  ang-els.  It  is  not 
then,  we  again  say,  that  we  are  insensible  to  benefits,  over- 
passing all  thought,  which  we  derive  from  the  mediatorial 
kingdom  ;  it  is  only  because  we  know  that  this  kingdom  is 
but  introductory  to  another,  and  that  the  perfection  of  hap- 
piness must  require  our  admission  into  direct  intercourse 
with  our  Maker — it  is  only  on  these  accounts  that  we  anti- 
cipate with  delight  the  giving  up  of  the  kingdom  to  the 
Father,  and  associate  whatever  is  most  gladdening  and  glo- 
rious with  the  truth,  that  God,  rather  than  Christ,  shall  be 
all  in  all  through  eternity. 

But  there  are  other  thoughts  suggested  by  the  fact,  that 
God  himself  shall  be  all  in  all.  We  have  hitherto  considered 
the  expression  as  simply  denoting  that  men  will  no  longer 
approach  God  through  a  Mediator,  and  that  their  happiness 
will  be  vastly  augmented  by  their  obtaining  the  privilege  of 
direct  access.  There  is,  however,  no  reason  for  supposing 
that  the  human  race  alone  will  be  affected  by  the  resignation 
of  the  mediatorial  kingdom.  We  may  not  believe  that  it  is 
only  over  ourselves  that  Christ  Jesus  has  been  invested  with 
sovereignty.  It  would  rather  appear,  since  all  power  has 
been  given  him  in  heaven  and  earth,  that  the  mediatorial 
kingdom  embraces  different  worlds,  and  different  orders  of 
intelligence  ;  and  that  the  chief  affairs  of  the  universe  are 
administered  by  Christ  in  his  glorified  humanity.  It  is 
therefore  possible  that  even  unto  angels  the  Godhead  does 
not  now  immediately  manifest  itself;  but  that  these  glorious 
creatures  are  governed,  like  ourselves,  through  the  instru- 
mentality of  the  Mediator.  Hence  it  will  be  a  great  transi- 
tion to  the  whole  intelligent  creation,  and  not  merely  to  an 


300  THE    TERMINATION     OF 

inconsiderable  fraction,  when  the  Son  shall  give  up  the 
kingdom  to  the  Father.  It  will  be  the  visible  enthronement 
of  Deity.  The  Creator  will  come  forth  from  his  sublime 
solitude,  and  assume  the  sceptre  of  his  boundless  empire.  It 
will  be  a  new  and  overwhelming  manifestation  of  Divinity 
— another  fold  of  the  vail,  which  must  always  hang  between 
the  created  and  the  uncreated,  will  have  been  removed  ; 
and  the  thousand  times  ten  thousand  spirits  which  throng 
immensity,  shall  behold  with  a  clearer  vision,  and  know 
with  an  ampler  knowledge,  the  Eternal  One  at  whose  word 
they  rose  into  being. 

And  it  is  not,  we  think,  possible  to  give  a  finer  description 
of  universal  harmony  and  happiness,  than  is  contained  in 
the  sentence,  "  God  all  in  all,"  when  supposed  to  have  refe- 
rence to  every  rank  in  creation.  Let  us  consider  for  a  mo- 
ment what  the  sentence  implies.  It  implies  that  there  shall 
be  but  one  mind,  and  that  the  Divine  mind,  throughout  the 
universe.  Every  creature  shall  be  so  actuated  by  Deity, 
that  the  Creator  shall  have  only  to  will,  and  the  whole  mass 
of  intelligent  being  will  be  conscious  of  the  same  wish,  and 
the  same  purpose.  It  is  not  merely  that  every  creature  will 
be  under  the  government  of  the  Creator,  as  a  subject  is  un- 
der that  of  his  prince.  It  is  not  merely  that  to  every  com- 
mand of  Deity  there  will  be  yielded  an  instant  and  cheerful 
obedience,  in  every  department,  and  by  every  inhabitant  of 
the  universe.  It  is  more  than  all  this.  It  is,  that  there  shall 
be  such  fibres  of  association  between  the  Creator  and  the 
creatures — God  shall  be  so  wound  up,  if  the  expression  be 
lawful,  with  all  intelligent  being — that  every  other  will  shall 
move  simultaneously  with  the  divine,  and  the  resolve  of 
Deity  be  instantaneously  felt  as  one  mighty  impulse  pervad- 
ing the  vast  expansions  of  mind.  God  all  in  all — it  is  that 
from  the  highest  order  to  the  lowest,  archangel,  and  angel, 
and  man,  and  principality,  and  power,  there  shall  be  but  one 
desire,  one  object ;  so  that  to  every  motion  of  the  eternal 
Spirit  there  will  be  a  corresponding  in  each  element  of  the 
intellectual  creation,  as  though  there  were  throughout  but 
one  soul,  one  animating,  actuating,  energizing  principle. 


THE  MEDIATORIAL  KINGDOM.  301 

God  all  in  all.  I  know  not  how  to  describe  the  harmony 
which  the  expression  seems  to  indicate.  This  gathering  of 
the  Creator  into  every  creature  ;  this  making  each  mind  in 
the  world  of  spirit  a  sort  of  centre  of  Deity,  from  which  flow 
the  high  decisions  of  divine  sovereignty,  so  that,  in  all  its 
amplitude,  the  intellectual  creation  seems  to  witness  that 
God  is  equally  every  where,  and  serves  as  one  grand  instru- 
ment which,  at  every  point  and  in  every  spring,  is  instinct 
with  the  very  thought  of  Him  who  "  ordereth  all  things  in 
heaven  and  earth" — oh,  this  immeasurably  transcends  the 
mere  reduction  of  all  systems,  and  all  beings,  into  a  delight- 
ed and  uniform  obedience.  This  is  making  God  more  than 
the  universal  Ruler  :  it  is  making  him  the  universal  Actua- 
tor. And  you  might  tell  me  of  tribe  upon  tribe  of  magnifi- 
cent creatures,  waiting  to  execute  the  commandments  of 
God  ;  you  might  delineate  the  very  tenant  of  every  spot  in 
immensity,  bowing  to  one  sceptre,  and  burning  with  one  de- 
sire, and  living  for  one  end — but  indeed  the  most  labored 
and  high-wrought  description  of  the  universal  prevalence  of 
concord,  yields  unspeakably  to  the  simple  announcement, 
that  there  shall  be  but  one  spirit,  one  pulse,  through  crea- 
tion ;  and  thought  itself  is  distanced,  when  we  hear,  that, 
after  the  Son  shall  have  surrendered  his  kingdom  to  the 
Father,  God  himself  shall  be  all  in  all  to  the  universe. 

But  if  the  expression  mark  the  harmony,  it  marks  also  the 
happiness  of  eternity.  It  is  undeniable,  that,  even  whilst 
on  earth,  we  find  things  more  beautiful  and  precious  in  pro- 
portion as  we  are  accustomed  to  find  God  in  them,  to  view 
them  as  gifts,  and  to  love  them  for  the  sake  of  the  giver.  It 
is  not  the  poet,  nor  the  naturalist,  who  has  the  richest  en- 
joyment when  surveying  the  landscape,  or  tracing  the  ma- 
nifestations of  creative  power  and  contrivance.  It  is  the 
christian,  who  recognizes  a  Father's  hand  in  the  glorious 
development  of  mountain  and  valley,  and  discovers  the  lov- 
ing-kindness of  an  ever-watchful  guardian  in  each  example 
of  the  adaptation  of  the  earth  to  its  inhabitants.  No  man 
has  such  pleasure  in  any  of  those  objects  which  answer  to 
the  various  affections  of  his  nature,  as  the  man  who  is  ac- 


302  THE    TERMINATION    OF 

customed  to  the  seeing  God  in  them.  And  then  only  is  the 
creature  loved,  not  merely  with  a  lawful,  but  with  an  eleva- 
ted and  ennobling  love,  when  regarded  as  bestowed  on  us 
by  the  Creator,  and  wearing  the  impress  of  the  benevolence 
of  Deity. 

What  will  it  be  when  God  shall  be  literally  all  in  all  ?  ll 
were  little  to  tell  us,  that,  admitted  into  the  heavenly  Jeru- 
salem, we  should  worship  in  a  temple  magnificent  in  archi- 
tecture, and  bow  down  at  a  shrine,  whence  flashed  the  efful- 
gence and  issued  the  voice  of  Jehovah.  The  mighty  and 
overwhelming  thing  is,  that,  according  to  the  vision  of  St. 
John,  there  shall  be  no  temple  there  ;  but  that  so  actually 
snail  God  be  all,  that  Deity  itself  will  be  our  sanctuary,  and 
our  adorations  be  rendered  in  the  sublime  recesses  of  the 
Omnipotent  himself.  It  were  little  to  assure  us  that  the 
everlasting  dwelling-place  of  the  saints  shall  be  irradiated 
by  luminaries  a  thousand-fold  more  splendid  and  gorgeous 
than  walk  the  firmament  of  a  fallen  creation.  The  animat- 
ing intelligence  is,  that  there  shall  be  "  no  need  of  the  sun, 
neither  of  the  moon  ;"  that  God  shall  be  all,  and  the  shillings 
of  Divinity  light  up  the  scenery  over  which  we  shall  expa- 
tiate. 

And  if  we  think  on  future  intercourse  with  beings  of  our 
own  race,  or  of  loftier  ranks,  then  only  are  the  anticipations 
rapturous  and  inspiriting,  when  Deity  seems  blended  with 
every  association.  I  know  how  frequently,  when  death  has 
made  an  inroad  on  a  household,  the  thoughts  of  survivors 
follow  the  buried  one  into  the  invisible  state  ;  and  with  what 
fervency  and  fondness  they  dwell  on  re-union  in  a  world 
where  partings  are  unknown.  And  never  let  a  syllable  be 
breathed  which  would  throw  suspicion  on  a  tenet  commend- 
ing itself  so  excpiisitely  to  the  best  sympathies  of  our  nature, 
or  take  away  from  mourners  the  consolatory  belief,  that,  in 
the  land  of  the  promised  inheritance,  the  parent  shall  know 
the  child  whom  he  followed  heart-broken  to  the  grave,  and 
the  child  the  parent  who  left  him  in  all  the  loneliness  of  or- 
phanage, and  the  husband  the  wife,  or  the  wife  the  husband, 
whose  removal  threw  a  blight  on  all  the  happiness  of  home. 


THE    MEDIATORIAL    KINGDOM.  303 

But  how  can  it  come  to  pass  that  there  will  he  any  thing 
like  the  renewal  of  human  associations,  and  yet  future  hap- 
piness be  of  that  exalted  and  unearthly  character,  which  has 
nothing  common  with  the  contracted  feelings  here  engaged 
by  a  solitary  family?  We  reply  at  once  that  God  is  to  be  all 
in  all.  The  child  may  be  again  loved  and  embraced;  and 
the  parent  may  be  again  loved  and  embraced.  But  the  emo- 
tions will  have  none  of  that  selfishness  into  which  the  purest 
and  deepest  of  our  feelings  may  now  be  too  much  resolved  : 
it  will  be  God  that  the  child  loves  in  the  parent,  and  it  will 
be  God  that  the  parent  loves  in  the  child ;  and  the  gladness 
with  which  the  heart  of  each  swells,  as  they  recognize  one 
the  other  in  the  celestial  city,  will  be  a  gladness  of  Avhich 
Deity  is  the  spring,  a  gladness  of  which  Deity  is  the  object. 
Thus  shall  it  be  also  in  regard  of  every  element  which 
can  be  supposed  to  enter  into  future  happiness.  It  is  certain, 
that,  if  God  be  all  in  all,  there  will  be  excited  in  us  no  wish 
which  we  shall  be  required  to  repress,  none  which  shall  not 
be  gratified  so  soon  as  formed.  Having  God  in  ourselves, 
we  shall  have  capacities  of  enjoyment  immeasurably  larger 
than  at  present ;  having  God  in  all  around  us,  we  shall  find 
every  where  material  of  enjoyment  commensurate  with  our 
amplified  powers.  Let  us  put  from  us  confused  and  indeter- 
minate notions  of  happiness,  and  the  simple  description,  that 
God  shall  be  all  in  all,  sets  before  us  the  very  perfection  of 
felicity.  The  only  sound  definition  of  happiness  is  that  every 
faculty  has  its  proper  object.  And  we  believe  of  man,  that 
God  endowed  him  with  various  capacities,  intending  to  be 
himself  their  supply.  Man  indeed  revolted  from  God,  and 
has  ever  since  endeavored,  though  ever  disappointed,  to  fill 
his  capacities  with  other  objects  than  God.  But  may  not 
God  hereafter,  having  rectified  the  disorders  of  humanity,  be 
himself  the  object  of  our  every  faculty  1  I  know  not  why  we 
may  not  suppose  that  not  only  the  works  of  God,  which  now 
manifest  his  qualities,  but  the  qualities  themselves,  as  they 
subsist  without  measure  in  the  ever-living  Creator,  will  be- 
come the  immediate  objects  of  contemplation.  "  What  an 
object,"  says  Bishop  Butler,  "  is  the  universe  to  a  creature, 


304  THE    TERMINATION    OF 

if  there  be  a  creature  who  can  comprehend  its  system.  But 
it  must  be  an  infinitely  higher  exercise  of  the  understand- 
ing, to  view  the  scheme  of  it  in  that  mind  which  projected 
it,  before  its  foundations  were  laid.  And  surely  we  have 
meaning  to  the  words  when  we  speak  of  going  further,  and 
viewing,  not  only  this  system  in  his  mind,  but  the  very  wis- 
dom, intelligence,  and  power  from  which  it  proceeded."  And 
yet  more,  as  the  prelate  goes  on  to  argue.  Wisdom,  intelli- 
gence, and  power,  are  not  God,  though  God  is  an  infinitely 
wise  being,  and  intelligent,  and  powerful.  So  that  to  con- 
template the  effects  of  wisdom  must  be  an  inferior  thing  to 
the  contemplating  wisdom  in  itself — for  the  cause  must  be 
always  a  higher  object  to  the  mind  than  the  effect — and  the 
contemplating  wisdom  in  itself  must  be  an  inferior  thing  to 
the  contemplating  the  divine  nature ;  for  wisdom  is  but  an 
attribute  of  the  nature,  and  not  the  very  nature  itself. 

Thus,  at  present,  we  make  little  or  no  approach  towards 
knowing  God  as  he  is,  because  God  hath  not  yet  made  him- 
self all  in  all  to  his  creatures.  But  let  there  once  come  this 
universal  diffusion  of  Deity,  and  we  may  find  in  God  himself 
the  objects  which  answer  to  our  matured  and  spiritualized 
faculties.  We  profess  not  to  be  competent  to  the  understand- 
ing the  mysterious  change  which  is  thus  indicated  as  passing 
on  the  universe.  But  we  can  perceive  it  to  be  a  change 
which  shall  be  full  of  glory,  full  of  happiness.  We  shall  be 
as  sensible  of  the  presence  of  God,  as  we  now  are  of  the  pre- 
sence of  a  friend,  when  he  is  standing  by  us,  and  conversing 
with  us.  "  And  what  will  be  the  joy  of  heart  which  his  pre- 
sence will  inspire  good  men  with,  when  they  shall  have  a 
sensation  that  he  is  the  sustainer  of  their  being,  that  they 
exist  in  him  ;  when  they  shall  feel  his  influence  cheering, 
and  enlivening,  and  supporting  their  frame,  in  a  manner  of 
which  we  have  now  no  conception  V  He  will  be,  in  a  literal 
sense,  their  strength  and  their  portion  for  ever. 

Thus  we  look  forward  to  the  termination  of  the  mediato- 
rial kingdom,  as  the  event  with  which  stands  associated  our 
reaching  the  summit  of  our  felicity.  There  is  then  to  be  a 
removal  of  all  that  is  now  intermediate  in  our  communica- 


THE    MEDIATORIAL    KIXODOJf.  30f> 

tionswifch  Deity,  and  the  substitution  of  God  himself  for  the 
objects  which  he  has  now  adapted  to  the  giving  us  delight. 
God  himself  will  be  an  object  to  our  faculties;  God  himself 
will  be  our  happiness.  And  as  we  travel  from  one  spot  to 
another  of  the  universe,  and  enter  into  companionship  with 
different  sections  of  its  rejoicing  population,  every  where  we 
shall  carry  Deity  with  us,  and  every  where  find  Deity — not 
us  now,  when  faith  must  all  along  do  battle  with  sense,  but  in 
manifestations  so  immediate,  so  direct,  so  adapted  to  our  fa- 
culties of  perception,  that  we  shall  literally  see  God,  and  be 
in  contact  with  God  ;  and  oh  then,  if  thought  recur  to  the 
days  of  probation,  when  all  that  concerns  us  was  adminis- 
tered through  a  Mediator,  we  shall  feel  that  whatever  is  most 
illustrious  in  dignity,  whatever  most  rapturous  in  enjoyment, 
was  promised  in  the  prophetic  announcement,  that,  when 
the  Son  shall  have  delivered  up  the  kingdom  to  the  Father, 
God  himself  shall  be  all  in  all. 

We  can  only  add  that  it  becomes  us  to  examine  whether 
we  are  now  subjects  of  the  mediatorial  kingdom,  or  whether 
we  are  of  those  who  will  not  that  Christ  should  reign  over 
them.  If  God  is  hereafter  to  be  all  in  all,  it  behoves  us  to 
inquire  what  he  is  to  us  now  'I  Can  we  say  with  the  psalmist, 
"whom  have  I  in  heaven  but  thee,  and  there  is  none  upon 
earth  that  I  desire  in  comparison  of  thee  ?"  How  vain  must 
be  our  hope  of  entering  into  heaven,  if  we  have  no  present 
delight  in  what  are  said  to  be  its  joys.  A  christian  finds  his 
happiness  in  holiness.  And  therefore,  when  he  looks  forward 
to  heaven,  it  is  the  holiness  of  the  scene,  and  association,  on 
which  he  fastens  as  affording  the  happiness.  He  is  not  in 
love  with  an  Arcadian  paradise,  with  the  green  pastures,  and 
the  flowing  waters,  and  the  minstrelsy  of  many  harpers.  He 
is  not  dreaming  of  a  bright  island,  where  he  shall  meet 
buried  kinsfolk,  and,  renewing  domestic  charities,  live  hu- 
man life  again  in  all  but  its  cares,  and  tears,  and  partings. 
"  Be  ye  holy,  for  I  am  holy  " — this  is  the  precept,  attempted 
conformity  to  which  is  the  business  of  a  christian's  life,  per- 
fect conformity  to  which  shall  be  the  blessedness  of  heaven. 
Let  us  therefore  take  heed  that  we  deceive  not  ourselves, 
39 


DOG     THE    TERMINATION    OF    THE    MEDIATORIAL    KINGDOM. 

The  apostle  speaks  of  "  tasting  the  powers  of  the  world  to 
come,"  as  though  heaven  were  to  begin  on  this  side  the 
grave.  We  may  be  enamored  of  heaven,  because  we  think 
that  "  there  the  wicked  cease  from  troubling,  and  the  weary 
are  at  rest."  We  may  be  enchanted  with  the  poetry  of  its  de- 
scriptions, and  fascinated  by  the  brilliancy  of  its  colorings, 
as  the  Evangelist  John  relates  his  visions,  and  sketches  the 
scenery  on  which  he  was  privileged  to  gaze.  But  all  this 
does  not  prove  us  on  the  high  road  to  heaven.  Again  Ave 
say,  that,  if  it  be  heaven  towards  which  we  journey,  it  will 
be  holiness  in  which  we  delight :  for  if  we  cannot  now  re- 
joice in  having  God  for  our  portion,  where  is  our  meetness 
for  a  world  in  which  God  is  to  be  all  in  all  for  ever  and  for 
ever? 


SERMON    III. 


THE  ADVANTAGES  RESULTING  FROM  THE 
POSSESSION  OF  THE  SCRIPTURES.* 


"  What  advantage  then  hath  the  Jew?  or  what  profit  is  there  of  circumci- 
sion i  Much  every  way  ;  chiefly  because  that  unto  them  were  commit- 
ted the  oracles  of  God." — Romans,  3  :  1,  2. 


We  think  it  unnecessary  either  to  examine  the  general 
argument  with  which  St.  Paul  was  engaged  when  he  penned 
these  words,  or  to  interpret  the  passage  with  reference  to  the 
Jew  rather  than  to  ourselves.  It  is  quite  evident  that  the 
force  of  the  verses  is  independent  on  the  general  argument, 
and  must  have  been  increased  rather  than  diminished,  as 
additions  were  made  to  the  amount  of  Revelation.  It  was 
objected  to  the  apostle  that  he  represented  Jew  and  Gentile 
as  all  along  on  the  same  level ;  but  he  felt  that  the  objection 
was  removed  by  reminding  his  opponent  that  the  Jew  had, 
and  the  Gentile  had  not,  the  sacred  Scriptures.  He  reck- 
oned it  sufficient  proof  that  an  unmeasured  advantage  had 
lain  with  the  chosen  people,  that  "  unto  them  had  been  com- 
mitted the  oracles  of  God." 

This  is  a  high  testimony  to  the  worth  of  the  Bible,  and 
deserves  to  be  examined  with  the  greatest  attention.  Of 
course,  if  the  possession  of  but  a  few  inspired  writings  gave 
the  Jew  a  vast  superiority  over  the  Gentile,  the  possession 

•  A  collection  was  made  after  this  Sermon  in  support  of  the  Old  Charity 

Schools. 


308  THE    ADVANTAGES    RESULTING    FK03t 

of  a  volume,  containing  (lie  whole  of  revelation,  must  be  at- 
tended with  yet  greater  privileges.  It  should,  however,  bo 
observed,  that  the  apostle  seems  to  refer  to  more  than  the 
mere  possession  of  the  Bible  :  the  expression  which  he  em- 
ploys marks  out  the  Jews  as  the  depository  of  revelation. 
-  Chiefly  because  that  unto  them  were  committed,  or  en- 
trusted, the  oracles  of  God."  There  may  be  here  an  intima- 
tion, that  those  who  have  the  Bible  are  to  be  regarded  as 
stewards,  just  as  are  those  who  have  large  earthly  posses- 
sions. If  this  be  correct,  there  are  two  points  of  view  under 
which  it  will  be  our  business  to  endeavor  to  set  before  you 
the  advantageousness  of  possessing  God's  oracles.  We  must 
show  that  the  Bible  is  profitable  to  a  nation,  in  the  first 
place,  because  that  nation  may  be  improved  by  its  contents ; 
m  the  second  place,  because  that  nation  may  impart  them  to 
others. 

Now  it  may  appear  so  trite  and  acknowledged  a  truth, 
that  a  people  is  advantaged  by  possessing  the  Bible,  that  it 
were  but  wasting  time  to  spend  much  on  its  exhibition.  We 
are  not,  however,  prepared  to  admit  that  the  worth  of  the 
Bible  is  generally  allowed,  or  adequately  estimated  ;  so  that, 
even  before  such  an  audience  as  the  present,  we  would  en- 
large on  the  advantages  which  result  to  a  nation  from  pos- 
sessing God's  oracles. 

We  take  at  first  the  lowest  ground  ;  for  many  who  ac- 
knowledge gratefully  the  worth  of  Holy  Writ,  when  man  is 
viewed  relatively  to  an  after  slate  of  being,  seem  little  con- 
scious of  the  blessings  derived  from  it,  when  he  is  regarded 
merely  in  reference  to  this  earth.  It  were  no  over-bold  opin- 
ion, that,  if  the  Bible  were  not  the  word  of  God,  and  could 
be  proved  to  be  not  the  word  of  God,  it  would  nevertheless 
be  the  most  precious  of  books,  and  do  immeasurably  more 
for  a  land  than  the  finest  productions  of  literature  and  philo- 
sophy. We  always  recur  with  great  delight  to  the  testimo- 
ny of  a  deist,  who,  after  publicly  laboring  to  disprove  Chris- 
tianity, and  to  bring  Scripture  into  contempt  as  a  forgery, 
was  found  instructing  his  child  from  the  pages  of  the  New 
Testament     When  taxed  with  the  flagrant  inconsistence, 


THE    POSSESSION    OF    THE    SCRIPTURES.  309 

his  only  reply  was.  that  it  was  necessary  to  teach  the  child 
morality,  and  that  nowhere  was  there  to  be  found  such  mo- 
rality as  in  the  Bible.  We  thank  the  deist  for  the  confes- 
sion. Whatever  our  scorn  of  a  man  who  could  be  guilty  of 
so  foul  a  dishonesty,  seeking  to  sweep  from  the  earth  a  vo- 
lume to  which,  all  the  while,  himself  recurred  for  the  prin- 
ciples of  education,  we  thank  him  for  his  testimony,  that  the 
morality  of  Scripture  is  a  morality  not  elsewhere  to  be  found  ; 
so  that,  if  there  were  no  Bible,  there  would  be  comparatively 
no  source  of  instruction  in  duties  and  virtues,  whose  neglect 
and  decline  would  dislocate  the  happiness  of  human  society. 
The  deist  was  right.  Deny  or  disprove  the  divine  origin  of 
Scripture,  and  nevertheless  you  must  keep  the  volume  as  a 
kind  of  text-book  of  morality,  if  indeed  you  would  not  wish 
the  banishment  from  our  homes  of  all  that  is  lovely  and  sa- 
cred, and  the  breaking  up,  through  the  lawlessness  of  ungo- 
verned  passions,  of  the  quiet  and  the  beauty  which  are  yet 
round  our  families. 

It  is  a  mighty  benefit,  invariably  produced  where  the  Bible 
makes  way — the  heightened  tone  of  morals,  and  the  intro- 
duction of  principles  essential  to  the  stability  of  government, 
and  the  well-being  of  households.  We  admit  indeed  that  this 
benefit  could  be  but  partially  wrought,  if  the  Bible  were  re- 
ceived as  only  a  human  composition.  We  do  not  exactly 
see  how  the  deist  was  to  enforce  on  his  child  the  practice  of 
what  Scripture  enjoined,  if  he  denied  to  that  Scripture  the 
authority  drawn  from  the  being  God's  word.  Yet  it  is  not 
to  be  doubted,  that,  even  where  there  is  but  little  regard  to 
the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible,  the  book  wields  no  inconsider- 
able sway ;  so  that  numbers,  who  care  nothing  for  it  as  a 
revelation  from  God,  are  unconsciously,  influenced  by  it  in 
every  department  of  conduct.  The  deist,  though  he  reject 
revelation,  and  treat  it  as  a  fable,  is  not  what  he  would  have 
been,  had  there  been  no  revelation.  As  a  member  of  society, 
he  has  been  fashioned  and  cast  into  the  mould  of  the  Bible, 
however  vehement  in  his  wish  to  exterminate  the  Bible.  It 
is  because  the  Bible  has  gained  footing  in  the  land  where  lie 
dwells,  and  drawn  a  new  boundary-line  between  what  is  base 


310  THE    ADVANTAGES    RESULTING    FROM 

and  what  honorable,  what  unworthy  of  rational  beings  and 
what  excellent  and  of  good  report,  that  he  has  learned  to 
prize  virtues  and  shun  vices,  which  respectively  promote, 
and  impede  the  happiness  of  families  and  the  greatness  of 
communities.  He  is  therefore  the  ungracious  spectacle  of  a 
being  elevated  by  that  which  he  derides,  ennobled  by  that  on 
which  lie  throws  ridicule,  and  indebted  for  all  on  which  he 
prides  himself  to  that  which  he  pronounces  unworthy  his 
regard. 

And  if  it  be  thus  certain — certain  on  the  confession  of  its 
enemies — that  a  pure  and  high  morality  is  to  be  gathered 
only  from  the  pages  of  the  Bible,  what  an  advantage  is  there 
in  the  possession  of  the  Scriptures,  even  if  death  were  the 
termination  of  human  existence.  Take  away  the  Bible  from 
a  nation,  so  that  there  should  no  longer  be  the  exhibition 
nnd  inculcation  of  its  precepts,  and  there  would  be  a  gradual, 
yea,  and  a  rapid,  introduction  of  false  principles  and  spurious 
theories,  which  would  pave  the  way  for  a  total  degeneracy 
of  manners.  You  would  quickly  find  that  honesty  and  integ- 
rity were  not  held  in  their  former  repute,  but  had  given  place 
to  fraud  and  extortion  ;  that  there  was  an  universal  setting- 
up  of  the  idol  of  selfishness,  before  which  all  that  is  generous, 
and  disinterested,  and  philanthropic,  would  be  forced  to  do 
homage;  that  there  was  attached  little  or  none  of  that  sn- 
credness  to  domestic  relationships  which  had  heretofore  been 
the  chief  charm  of  families ;  and  that  there  was  departing 
from  our  institutions  all  that  is  glorious  in  liberty,  and  from 
our  firesides  all  that  gives  them  their  attractiveness.  "What- 
ever had  been  introduced  and  matured  by  the  operations  of 
Christianity,  would,  in  process  of  time,  decay  and  disappear, 
were  those  operations  suspended ;  and  since  Ave  can  confi- 
dently trace  to  the  influences  of  true  religion,  our  advance- 
ment in  all  that  concerns  the  public  security,  and  the  private 
tranquillity  ;  we  can  with  equal  confidence  affirm  our  speedy 
relapse,  if  these  influences  were  suddenly  withdrawn.  And 
therefore  do  wre  feel  that  we  give  no  exaggerated  statement, 
when  we  describe  the  possession  of  the  Bible  as  the  posses- 
sion of  a  talisman,  by  which  the  worst  forms  of  evil  are 


THE    POSSESSION    OF    THE    SCRIPTURES.  .'Ill 

averted  from  a  land,  and  the  best  and  purest  blessings  shrin- 
ed in  its  households. 

We  are  never  afraid  to  ascribe  to  the  prevalence  of  true 
religion,  that  unmeasured  superiority  in  all  the  dignities  and 
decencies  of  life,  which  distinguishes  a  christian  nation  as 
compared  with  a  heathen.  We  ascribe  it  to  nothing  but  ac- 
quaintance with  the  revealed  will  of  God,  that  those  king- 
doms of  the  earth,  which  bow  at  the  name  of  Jesus,  have 
vastly  outstripped  in  civilization  every  other,  whether  an- 
cient or  modern,  which  may  be  designated  pagan  and  ido- 
latrous. If  you  search  for  the  full  developement  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  civil  liberty,  for  the  security  of  property,  for  an  even- 
handed  justice,  for  the  rebuke  of  gross  vices,  for  the  cultiva- 
tion of  social  virtues,  and  for  the  diffusion  of  a  generous  care 
of  the  suffering,  you  must  turn  to  lands  where  the  cross  has 
been  erected — as  though  Christianity  were  identified  with 
what  is  fine  in  policy,  lofty  in  morals,  and  permanent  in 
greatness.  Yea,  as  though  the  Bible  were  a  mighty  volume, 
containing  whatever  is  requisite  for  correcting  the  disorders 
of  states,  and  cementing  the  happiness  of  families,  you  find 
that  the  causing  it  to  be  received  and  read  by  a  people,  is 
tantamount  to  the  producing  a  thorough  revolution — a  revo- 
lution including  equally  the  palace  and  the  cottage — so  that 
every  rank  in  society,  as  though  there  had  been  waved  over 
it  the  wand  of  the  magician,  is  mysteriously  elevated,  and 
furnished  with  new  elements  of  dignity  and  comfort.  Who 
then  will  refuse  to  confess,  that,  even  if  regard  were  had  to 
nothing  beyond  the  present  narrow  scene,  there  is  no  gift 
comparable  to  that  of  the  Bible ;  and  that  consequently, 
though  a  nation  might  throw  away,  as  did  the  Jewish,  the 
greatest  of  their  privileges,  and  fail  to  grasp  the  immortality 
set  before  them  in  the  revelation  entrusted  to  their  keeping, 
there  would  yet  be  proof  enough  of  their  having  possessed 
a  vast  advantage  over  others,  in  the  fact  adduced  by  St.  Paul 
in  our  text,  that  "  unto  them  had  been  committed  the  oracles 
of  God?" 

We  would  further  observe  that  we  stand  indebted  to  the 
Bible  for  much  of  intellectual  as  well  as  moral  advantage. 


ol-2  THE     ADVANTAGES     RESULTING    FROM 

Indeed  the  two  go  together.  Where  there  is  great  moral, 
there  will  commonly  be  great  mental  degradation  ;  and  the 
intellect  has  no  fair  play,  whilst  the  man  is  under  the  domi 
nion  of  vice.  It  is  certainly  to  be  observed,  that,  in  becoming- 
a  religious  man,  an  individual  seems  to  gain  a  wider  com- 
prehension, and  a  sounder  judgment ;  as  though,  in  turning 
to  God,  he  had  sprung  to  a  higher  grade  in  intelligence.  It 
would  mark  a  weak,  or  at  least  an  uninformed  mind,  to  look 
with  contempt  on  the  Bible,  as  though  beneath  the  notice  of 
a  man  of  high  power  and  pursuit.  He  who  is  not  spiritually, 
will  be  intellectually  benefited  by  the  study  of  Scripture ; 
nnd  we  would  match  the  sacred  volume  against  every  other, 
when  the  object  proposed  in  the  perusal  is  the  strengthening 
the  understanding  by  contact  with  lofty  truth,  or  the  refining 
the  taste  by  acquaintance  with  exquisite  beauty.  And  of 
course  the  intellectual  benefit  is  greatly  heightened,  if  ac- 
companied by  a  spiritual.  Man  becomes  in  the  largest  sense 
"  a  new  creature,"  when  you  once  waken  the  dormant  im- 
mortality. It  is  not,  of  course,  that  there  is  communicated  any- 
fresh  set  of  mental  powers;  but  there  is  removed  all  that 
weight  and  oppression  which  ignorance  and  viciousness  lay 
upon  the  brain.  And  what  is  true  of  an  individual  is  true,  in 
its  degree,  of  a  nation  ;  the  diffusion  of  christian  know- 
ledge being  always  attended  by  the  diffusion  of  correcter 
views  in  other  departments  of  truth,  so  that,  in  proportion 
as  a  peasantry  is  christianized,  you  will  find  it  more  inquir- 
ing and  intelligent. 

And  there  is  no  cause  for  surprise  in  the  fact,  that  intellec- 
tual benefits  are  conferred  by  the  Bible.  It  is  to  be  remem- 
bered that  we  are  indebted  to  the  Bible  for  all  our  knowledge 
of  the  early  history  of  the  world,  of  the  creation  of  man,  and 
of  his  first  condition  and  actions.  Remove  the  Bible,  and  we 
are  left  to  conjecture  and  fable,  and  to  that  enfeebling  of  the 
understanding  which  error  almost  necessarily  produces. 
Having  no  authentic  account  of  the  origin  of  all  things,  we 
should  bewilder  ourselves  with  theories  which  would  hamper 
our  every  inquiry ;  and  the  mind,  perplexed  and  baffled  at 
the  outset,  would  never  expand  freely  in  its  after  investiga- 


THE    POSSESSION    OF    THE     SCRIPTURES.  ol3 

lions.  We  should  have  confused  apprehensions  of  some  un- 
known powers  on  which  we  depended;  peopling  the  heavens 
with  various  deities,  and  subjecting  ourselves  to  the  tyrannies 
of  superstition.  And  it  is  scarcely  to  be  disputed,  that  there 
is,  in  every  respect,  a  debasing  tendency  in  superstition  ;  and 
that,  if  we  imagined  the  universe  around  us  full  of  rival  and 
antagonist  gods,  in  place  of  knowing  it  under  the  dominion 
of  one  mighty  First  Cause,  we  should  enter  at  a  vast  disad- 
vantage on  the  scrutiny  of  the  wonders  by  which  we  are  sur- 
rounded ;  the  intellect  being  clouded  by  the  mists  of  moral 
darkness,  and  all  nature  overcast  through  want  of  knowledge 
of  its  author. 

The  astronomer  may  have  been  guided,  however  uncon- 
sciously, by  the  Bible,  as  he  has  pushed  his  discoveries 
across  the  broad  fields  of  space.  Why  is  it  that  the  chief  se- 
crets of  nature  have  been  penetrated  only  in  christian  times, 
and  in  christian  lands  ;  and  that  men,  whose  names  are  first 
in  the  roll  on  which  science  emblazons  her  achievements, 
have  been  men  on  whom  fell  the  rich  light  of  revelation  ? 
We  pretend  not  to  say  that  it  was  revelation  which  directly 
taught  them  how  to  trace  the  motions  of  stars,  and  laid  open 
to  their  gaze  mysteries  which  had  heretofore  baffled  man's 
sagacity.  But  we  believe,  that,  just  because  their  lot  was  cast 
in  days,  and  in  scenes,  when  and  where  the  Bible  had  been 
received  as  God's  word,  their  intellect  had  freer  play  than  it 
would  otherwise  have  had,  and  their  mind  went  to  its  work 
with  greater  vigor,  and  less  impediment.  We  believe  that  he 
who  sets  himself  to  investigate  the  revolutions  of  planets, 
knowing  thoroughly  beforehand  who  made  those  planets  and 
governs  their  motions,  would  be  incalculably  more  likely  to 
reach  some  great  discovery,  than  another  who  starts  in  utter 
ignorance  of  the  truths  of  creation,  and  ascribes  the  planets 
to  chance,  or  some  unintelligible  agency.  And  it  is  nothing 
against  this  opinion,  that  some  who  have  been  eminent  by 
scientific  discoveries,  have  been  notorious  for  rejection  of 
Christianity  and  opposition  to  the  Bible.  Let  them  have  been 
even  atheists — they  have  been  atheists,  not  in  a  land  of 
atheists,  but  in  a  land  of  worshipers  of  the  one  true  God ; 
40 


314  THE    ADVANTAGES     RESULTING     FROM 

and  our  conviction  is,  that,  had  they  been  atheists  in  a  land 
of  atheists,  they  would  never  have  so  signalized  themselves 
by  scientific  discovery.  It  has  been  through  living,  as  it  were, 
in  an  atmosphere  of  truth,  however  they  themselves  have 
imbibed  error,  that  they  have  gained  that  elasticity  of  powers 
which  has  enabled  them  to  rise  into  unexplored  regions. 
They  have  not  been  ignorant  of  the  truths  of  the  Bible,  how- 
ever they  may  have  repudiated  the  Bible  ;  and  these  truths 
have  told  on  all  their  faculties,  freeing  them  from  trammels,, 
and  invigorating  them  for  labor ;  so  that  very  possibly  the 
eminence  which  they  have  reached,  and  where  they  rest 
with  so  much  pride,  would  have  been  as  inaccessible  to 
themselves  as  to  the  gifted  inquirers  of  heathen  times,  had 
not  the  despised  Gospel  pioneered  the  way,  and  the  rejected 
Scriptures  unfettered  their  understandings. 

We  are  thus  to  the  full  as  persuaded  of  the  intellectual,  as 
of  the  moral  benefits  produced  by  the  Bible.  We  reckon,  that, 
in  giving  the  inspired  volume  to  a  nation,  you  give  it  that 
which  shall  cause  its  mental  powers  to  expand,  as  well  as 
that  which  shall  rectify  existing  disorders.  And  if  you  would 
account  for  the  superiority  of  christian  over  heathen  lands 
in  what  is  intellectually  great,  in  philosophy,  and  science, 
and  the  stretch  and  the  grasp  of  knowledge,  you  may  find 
the  producing  causes  in  the  possession  of  the  Scriptures- 
yea,  and  men  may  come  with  all  the  bravery  of  a  boastful 
erudition,  and  demand  admiration  of  the  might  of  the  hu- 
man mind,  as  it  seems  to  subjugate  the  universe,  counting 
the  heavenly  hosts,  and  tracking  comets  as  they  sweep  along 
where  the  eye  cannot  follow ;  but  so  well  assured  are  we  that 
it  was  revelation  alone  whose  beams  warmed  what  was 
dwarfish  till  it  sprang  into  this  vigor,  that  we  explain  the 
greater  mental  strength  which  a  nation  may  display,  on  the 
principle  "  chiefly  that  unto  them  have  been  committed  the 
oracles  of  God." 

But  if  we  can  thus  make  good  the  advantageousness  as- 
serted in  our  text,  when  the  reference  is  exclusively  to  the 
present  scene  of  being,  we  shall  have  but  little  difficulty 
when  we  take  higher  ground.    Is  it  nothing  that  a  people 


THE    POSSESSION    OF    THE    SCRIPTURES.  315 

may  put  from  them  the  offer  of  immortality,  and  thus  bring 
upon  themselves  at  last  a  heavier  condemnation,  than  could 
have  overtaken  them,  had  they  never  heard  the  Gospel.  It 
would  be  for  the  final  advantage  of  the  individual  who  dies 
in  impenitence  and  infidelity,  that  his  spirit  should  perish 
like  that  of  the  brutes;  but  it  will  not,  on  this  account,  be 
contended  that  there  was  no  blessing  in  his  being  born  a 
man.  In  like  manner,  it  cannot  be  argued,  that  there  has 
been  nothing  profitable  in  the  possession  of  the  Scriptures, 
because  the  gift  has  been  abused  or  neglected.  We  can  say 
to  those  who  as  yet  have  drawn  no  spiritual  benefit  from  the 
Bible,  the  opportunity  is  not  gone  ;  the  Scriptures  may  still 
be  searched,  and  life-giving  doctrines  derived  from  their 
statements.  And  is  this  no  advantage?  Is  it  no  advantage, 
that  salvation  is  brought  within  reach  ;  and  does  it  nullify 
the  advantage,  that  men  will  not  stretch  forth  the  hand  to 
lay  hold  ? 

And  even  if  the  mass  of  a  nation,  privileged  with  the  Bible, 
have  their  portion  at  last  with  the  unbelieving,  it  must  not 
be  forgotten,  that  there  is  in  every  age  a  remnant  who  trust 
in  the  Savior  whom  that  Bible  reveals.  The  blessings  which 
result  from  the  possession  of  the  Scriptures  are  not  to  be 
computed  from  what  appears  on  the  surface  of  society.  There 
is  a  quiet  under-current  of  happiness,  which  is  generally  un- 
observed, but  which  greatly  swells  the  amount  of  good  to  be 
traced  to  the  Bible.  You  must  go  into  families,  and  see  how 
burdens  are  lightened,  and  afflictions  mitigated,  by  the  pro- 
mises of  holy  writ.  You  must  follow  men  into  their  retire- 
ments, and  learn  how  they  gather  strength,  from  the  study 
of  the  sacred  volume,  for  discharging  the  various  duties  of 
life.  You  must  be  with  them  in  their  struggles  with  pover- 
ty, and  observe  how  contentment  is  engendered  by  the  pros- 
pect of  riches  which  cannot  fade  away.  You  must  be  with 
them  on  their  death-beds,  and  mark  how  the  gloom  of  the 
opening  grave  is  scattered  by  a  hope  which  is  "  full  of  im- 
mortality." And  you  must  be  with  them — if  indeed  the  spirit 
could  be  accompanied  in  its  heavenward  flight — as  they  en- 
ter the  Divine  presence,  and  prove,  by  taking  possession  of 


316  THE    ADVANTAGES    RESULTING    FROM 

the  inheritance  which  the  Bible  offers  to  believers,  that  they 
"have  not  followed  cunningly  devised  fables."  The  sum  of 
happiness  conferred  by  revelation  can  never  be  known  until 
God  shall  have  laid  open  all  secrets  at  the  judgment.  We 
must  have  access  to  the  history  of  every  individual,  from  his 
childhood  up  to  his  entering  his  everlasting  rest,  ere  we  have 
the  elements  from  which  to  compute  what  Christianity  hath 
done  for  those  who  receive  it  into  the  heart.  And  if  but  one 
or  two  were  gathered  out  from  a  people,  as  a  result  of  con- 
veying to  that  people  the  records  of  revelation,  there  would 
be,  we  may  not  doubt,  such  an  amount  of  conferred  benefit 
as  would  sufficiently  prove  the  advantageousness  of  possess- 
ing the  oracles  of  God. 

It  shall  not  be  in  vain  that  God  hath  sent  the  Bible  to  a 
nation,  and  caused  the  truths  of  Christianity  fo  be  published 
within  its  borders.  There  may  be  what  approximates  to  a 
general  disregard  of  the  Scriptures,  and  an  universal  rejec- 
tion of  the  offers  of  salvation.  Yet  God  hath  his  hidden  ones 
who  are  delighting  greatly  in  his  testimonies.  When  Elijah 
complained  that  he  stood  alone  in  the  service  of  his  Maker, 
the  answer  of  God  was,  "  I  have  reserved  to  myself  seven 
thousand  men  who  have  not  bowed  the  knee  to  the  image 
of  Baal."  We  are  therefore,  at  the  best,  poor  judges  of  the 
way  actually  made  by  the  Gospel,  and  of  the  influence  which 
it  wields,  whilst  we  see  nothing  on  all  sides  but  a  spreading 
degeneracy.  When  profligacy  and  infidelity  are  at  their 
height,  there  may  be  many  a  roof  beneath  which  is  offered 
humble  prayer  through  a  Mediator,  and  many  an  eye  which 
weeps  in  secret  for  dishonors  done  to  God,  and  many  a  heart 
which  beats  high  with  expectation  of  the  land,  ':  where  the 
wicked  cease  from  troubling,  and  the  weary  are  at  rest.*' 
Are  we  not  then  bound  in  all  cases,  when  seeking  full  evi- 
dence that  the  Bible  has  been  a  blessing  wheresoever  impart- 
ed, to  refer  to  the  close  of  the  dispensation,  when  Christ  shall 
separate  the  tares  from  the  wheat  ?  Then  will  it  be  told  to 
the  universe,  how  a  despised  and  overlooked  company  were 
"  filled  with  joy  unspeakable  and  full  of  glory,"  by  the  Gos- 
pel of  Jesus  Christ.     Then  will  it  be  made  manifest  how  the 


THE    POSSESSION    OF    THE    SCRIPTURES.  317 

consolations  of  religion  have  pervaded  many  families,  what 
anxieties  they  have  soothed,  what  tears  they  have  dried, 
what  hopes  they  have  communicated.  Then  will  it  be  seen, 
that,  over  and  above  the  intellectual  and  moral  advantages 
which  the  Scriptures  have  conferred  on  those  who  never 
took  them  as  their  guide  for  eternity,  spiritual  advantages 
have  been  derived  to  others,  who  were  stirred  by  their  an- 
nouncements from  the  lethargy  of  sin,  and  moved  to  flee  for 
refuge  to  the  cross  of  the  Redeemer.  Yea,  and  if  it  even 
came  to  pass  that  the  great  bulk  of  a  people  shrank  away 
from  the  face  of  the  Judge,  beaten  down  by  the  conscious- 
ness that  they  had  not  trusted  in  him  as  the  propitiation  for 
their  sins;  yet  would  the  few  who  were  lifting  up  their 
heads  with  joy,  be  witnesses  that  revelation  was  the  best 
boon  which  God  could  bestow  on  a  land — witnesses  by  the 
wrath  which  the  Bible  had  taught  them  to  escape,  witnesses 
by  the  glory  it  had  instructed  them  to  gain,  that,  in  every 
case,  and  under  all  circumstances,  it  was  a  mighty  advan- 
tage to  a  people,  that  "  unto  them  had  been  committed  the 
oracles  of  God.;' 

But  we  observed  that  the  expression  employed  by  the 
apostle,  "chiefly  because  that  unto  them  were  committed,  or 
intrusted,  the  oracles  of  God,"  represents  the  Jews  as  stewards 
who  should  have  dispensed  the  Bible,  and  who  might  them- 
selves have  been  profited  through  conveying  it  to  others. 
We  are  all  aware  that  special  promises  are  made  in  the 
Scriptures  to  those  who  shall  be  instrumental  in  turning 
many  from  darkness,  and  converting  sinners  from  the  error 
of  their  ways.  We  ordinarily  apply  these  promises  to  indivi- 
duals ;  and  we  expect  them  to  be  made  good  to  the  zealous 
minister,  and  the  self-denying  missionary.  Undoubtedly  the 
application  is  just;  for  we  cannot  question  that  those  who 
have  faithfully  and  successfully  labored  in  winning  souls  to 
Christ,  shall  receive  a  portion  of  more  than  common  bril- 
liancy, when  the  Master  comes  to  reckon  with  his  servants. 
But  we  know  not  why  these  promises  would  not  have  been 
as  applicable  to  communities  as  to  individuals,  had  commu- 
nities regarded  God's  oracles  as  a  sacred  deposit,  and  them- 


31S  THE    ADVANTAGES    RESULTING    FROM 

selves  as  stewards  who  must  give  account  of  their  distribu- 
tion. The  earth  has  never  yet  presented  the  grand  spectacle 
of  what  might  be  called  a  missionary  nation,  a  people  who 
felt  that  the  true  religion  was  held  in  trust  for  the  benefit  of 
the  world,  and  who  concentered  their  energies  on  the  being- 
faithful  in  their  stewardship.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the  Jews 
did  this,  though,  in  spite  of  their  frequent  rebellions  and 
lapses  into  idolatry,  they  were  the  leaven  which  prevented 
the  complete  decomposition  of  the  world,  and  the  light  which 
alone  relieved  the  ponderous  moral  darkness.  It  cannot  be 
said  that  we  ourselves  have  done  this,  whatever  the  efforts 
which  have  of  late  years  been  made  for  translating  the 
Scriptures  into  the  various  languages,  and  conveying  them 
to  the  various  districts,  of  the  globe.  There  has  been  nothing 
which  has  approached  to  a  national  recognition,  and  a  na- 
tional acting  on  the  recognition,  that  God  hath  made  this 
land  the  depository  of  his  word,  in  order  that  we  might  em- 
ploy those  resources,  which  an  unlimited  commerce  places 
at  our  disposal,  in  diffusing  that  word  over  the  enormous 
wastes  of  paganism.  It  is  not  by  the  endeavors  and  actions 
of  private  individuals  that  the  national  stewardship  can  be 
faithfully  discharged.  A  nation  must  act  through  its  gover- 
nors ;  and  then  only  would  the  nation  prove  its  sense,  that 
the  oracles  of  God  had  been  deposited  with  it  in  order  to  dis- 
tribution through  the  world,  when  its  governors  made  the 
conversion  of  the  heathen  one  great  object  for  which  they 
legislated  and  labored. 

In  this  manner  would  a  christian  state  occupy  the  same 
position  amongst  nations,  as  an  affluent  christian  individual 
amongst  the  parishes  and  hamlets  of  a  distressed  neigbor- 
hood.  Just  as  the  individual  counts  it  his  business  and  pri- 
vilege, to  communicate  of  his  temporal  abundance  to  the  in- 
mates of  surrounding  cottages,  so  would  the  state  count  it 
its  business  and  privilege  to  communicate  of  its  spiritual 
abundance  to  the  ignorant  in  surrounding  territories.  And 
however  little  ground  there  may  be  for  a  hope  that  any  chris- 
tian state  will  step  forward,  and  take  to  itself  the  missionary 
character,  we  can  be  sure  that  the  absence  of  all  national  effort 


THE    POSSESSION    OF    THE    SCRIPTURES.  319 

to  disseminate  revelation  is  offensive  in  God's  sight,  and  must 
sooner  or  later  provoke  retribution.  The  Bible  is  not  given  to 
a  people  exclusively  for  their  own  use.  It  is  the  food  of  the 
whole  world,  the  volume  from  which  whatever  is  human 
must  draw  the  soul's  sustenance.  And  no  more  right  have 
a  people  to  keep  this  book  to  themselves,  whilst  thousands  in 
other  lands  are  worn  down  by  moral  famine,  than  they  would 
have  to  hoard  the  earth's  fruits,  if  their  own  wants  were 
supplied,  and  the  cry  of  starving  multitudes  swept  across 
the  seas. 

Neither  would  the  faithful  discharge  of  the  stewardship 
be  without  its  reward.  Our  text  affirms  it  for  the  advantage 
of  a  people,  that  there  have  been  deposited  with  them  the 
oracles  of  God.  We  may  conclude,  therefore,  that,  in  act- 
ing on  the  principle  that  the  oracles  are  held  in  trust  for  the 
benefit  of  the  world,  a  people  would  secure  the  recompense 
graciously  annexed  to  the  laboring  to  extend  the  kingdom 
of  Christ.  Who  indeed  that  remembers  that  we  live  under 
an  economy  of  strict  retribution,  and  that  nations  can  only 
be  dealt  with  as  nations  on  this  side  eternity,  will  see  cause 
to  doubt  that  the  earnest  discharge  of  what  we  call  the  na- 
tional stewardship,  would  be  the  best  means  of  advancing 
and  upholding  the  national  greatness  ? 

We  can  believe  of  a  people  circumstanced  like  ourselves, 
that,  in  acting  as  stewards  of  the  mysteries  of  God,  we  should 
erect  a  rampart  against  every  enemy,  and  secure  continued 
progress  in  all  that  makes  a  kingdom  mighty.  There  are 
mixed  up  with  the  dealings  of  commerce  the  grandest  pur- 
poses of  God  towards  this  fallen  creation.  Every  country 
might  have  been  its  own  store-house  of  every  necessary  and 
every  luxury.  It  might  have  possessed  within  its  own  con- 
fines the  productions  of  the  whole  globe,  and  thus  have  had 
but  little  motive  to  intercourse  with  other  states.  But,  by  di- 
versifying his  gifts,  God  hath  made  it  for  the  profit  of  the  world, 
that  there  should  be  constant  interchange  of  property.  Thus 
facilities  are  afforded  for  the  communication  of  moral  as  well 
as  physical  advantages ;  and  commerce  may  become  the 
great  propagator  of  Christianity.      And  it  strikes  us  as  a 


320  THE    ADVANTAGES    RESULTING    FROM 

beautiful  arrangement,  that  it  may  have  been  with  the  ex- 
press design  of  providing  that  the  true  religion  should  spread 
its  branches  over  the  world,  that  God  caused  the  palm-tree, 
and  the  citron-tree,  to  grow  in  one  land  and  not  in  another  ; 
and  that,  in  order  to  bring  the  pearl  of  great  price  within 
reach  of  all,  he  may  have  given  the  gold  to  this  district,  and 
the  diamond  to  that.  And  when  the  ocean  is  before  us,  dot- 
ted with  vessels  hastening  to  every  quarter  of  the  earth,  or 
returning  with  the  produce  of  far-off  islands  and  continents, 
we  look  on  a  nobler  spectacle  than  that  of  human  ingenuity 
and  hardihood  triumphing  over  the  elements,  that  wealth 
may  be  accumulated  and  appetite  pampered — we  are  be- 
holding the  machinery  through  which  God  hath  ordained 
that  the  sections  of  the  human  family  should  be  kept  knit  to- 
gether, and  the  preparations  which  he  hath  made  for  the 
diffusion  of  Christianity,  when  the  word  shall  be  given,  and 
"  great  shall  be  the  company  of  the  preachers."  It  has  not 
therefore  been  without  a  view  to  the  maintenance  of  truth 
and  the  spread  of  religion,  that  God  hath  given  to  this  land 
the  empire  of  the  seas,  and  opened  to  it  intercourse  with 
every  section  of  the  globe.  We  rather  believe  that  we  have 
been  made  great  in  commerce,  that  we  might  be  great  in 
the  diffusion  of  knowledge.  With  our  fleets  on  every  sea, 
and  unbounded  wealth  accumulated  in  our  cities,  there  needs 
nothing  but  that,  as  a  nation,  we  should  feel  our  accountable- 
ness,  and  rapidly  might  the  records  of  revelation  make  their 
way  through  the  world.  And  if  we  were  thus  instrumental 
to  the  spread  of  the  Gospel,  thus  faithful  to  our  stewardship, 
it  would  not  be  foreign  aggression,  nor  domestic  insubordi- 
nation, from  which  there  would  be  danger  to  the  land  of  our 
birth  ;  there  would  be  permanence  in  our  might,  because 
wielded  in  God's  cause,  and  fixedness  in  our  prosperity,  be- 
cause consecrated  by  piety.  And  as  glory  and  greatness 
flowed  in  upon  us,  and  the  stewards  of  the  Bible  stood  forth 
as  the  sovereigns  of  the  world,  other  causes  of  the  elevation 
might  indeed  be  assigned  by  the  politician  and  philosopher  ; 
but  the  true  reason  would  be  with  those  who  should  give  in 
explanation,  "  Chiefly  because  that  unto  them  were  commit- 
ted the  oracles  of  God 


THE     POSSESSION     OF    THE     SCRIPTUR1 


321 


I  may  here  refer  for  a  moment  to  that  charitable  cause  for 
which  I  am  directed  to  ask  your  support.  It  must  be  suffi- 
cient to  remind  you,  intrusted  as  you  are  with  the  Bible, 
that  there  are  hundreds  of  children  in  this  town  requiring 
to  be  educated  in  the  principles  of  the  Bible,  and  you  will 
contribute  liberally  towards  upholding  the  schools  which 
now  make  their  usual  appeal  to  your  bounty.  There  have 
been  times  when  it  was  necessary  to  debate  and  demonstrate 
the  duty  of  providing-  instruction  for  the  children  of  the  poor. 
Such  times  are  gone.  We  have  now  no  choice.  He  were  as 
wise  a  man  who  should  think  to  roll  back  the  Atlantic,  as  he 
who  would  stay  the  advancing  tide  of  intelligence  which  is 
pressing-  through  the  land.  You  cannot  if  you  would.  And 
I  do  not  believe  there  is  one  here  who  would  lift  a  finger  in 
so  unrighteous  an  enterprise.  Here,  if  any  where,  a  man  may 
glory  in  that  general  outstretching  of  the  human  mind  which 
is  characteristic  of  the  times ;  and  rejoice  in  the  fact,  that  in 
knowledge,  and  mental  developement,  the  lower  classes  are 
following  so  close  on  the  higher,  that  these  latter  must  go 
onward  with  a  vigorous  stride,  if  they  would  not  be  quickly 
overtaken.  It  is  not  in  such  a  seat  of  learning  as  this,  that 
we  shall  find  dislike  to  the  spread  of  information.  Know- 
ledge is  a  generous  and  communicative  thing,  and  jealousy 
at  its  progress  is  ordinarily  the  index  of  its  wants.  You 
would  not,  if  you  could,  arrest  the  progress  of  education. 
But  you  may  provide  that  the  education  shall  be  christian 
education.  You  may  thus  insure  that  education  shall  be  a 
blessing,  not  a  curse ;  and  save  the  land  from  being  covered 
with  that  wildest  and  most  unmanageable  of  all  populations, 
a  population  mighty  alike  in  intellect  and  ungodliness,  a  po- 
pulation that  knows  every  thing  but  God,  emancipated  from 
all  ignorance  but  that  which  is  sure  to  breed  the  worst  law- 
lessness, ignorance  of  the  duties  of  the  religion  of  Christ. 
An  uneducated  population  may  be  degraded  ;  a  population 
educated,  but  not  in  righteousness,  will  be  ungovernable. 
The  one  may  be  slaves,  the  other  must  be  tyrants. 

We  have  now  only,  in  conclusion,  to  express  an  earnest 
hope  that  we  may  all  learn,  from  the  subject  discussed,  to 
41 


322  THE    ADVANTAGES,    <tc. 

set  a  higher  value  than  ever  on  the  Scriptures.  Do  we  re- 
ceive the  Bible  as  "  the  oracles  of  God  ?"  The  Bible  is  as 
actually  a  divine  communication  as  though  its  words  came 
to  us  in  the  voice  of  the  Almighty,  mysteriously  syllabled, 
and  breathed  from  the  firmament.  What  awe,  what  rever- 
ence, what  prostration  of  soul,  would  attend  the  persuasion 
that  such  is  the  Bible  ;  so  that  opening  it  is  like  entering  the 
hallowed  haunt  of  Deity,  whence  unearthly  lips  will  breathe 
oracular  responses.  There  needs  nothing  but  an  abiding  con- 
viction that  Scripture  remains,  what  it  was  at  the  first,  the 
word  of  the  living  God — not  merely  a  written  thing,  but  a 
spoken ;  as  much  a  message  now  as  when  originally  deli- 
vered— and  the  volume  will  be  perused,  as  it  ought  to  be,  in 
humility,  yet  in  hope,  with  prayer,  yet  with  confidence.  And 
when  God  is  regarded  as  always  speaking  to  his  creatures 
through  the  volume  of  revelation,  there  will  be  no  marvel 
that,  practically,  this  volume  should  be  influential  on  the 
moral  and  mental,  the  temporal  as  well  as  eternal,  interests 
of  man.  "  The  voice  of  the  Lord,"  saith  the  Psalmist,  "  is 
upon  the  waters ;  the  voice  of  the  Lord  divideth  the  flames 
of  fire  :"  and  well  therefore  may  this  voice  correct  the  dis- 
orders of  states,  and  fan  the  sparks  of  genius,  as  well  as  sum- 
mon from  the  perishable,  and  guide  to  the  immortal. 


SERMON    IV. 


NEGLECT  OF  THE  GOSPEL  FOLLOWED   BY  ITS  REMOVAL. 


r:  Remember  therefore  from  whence  thou  art  fallen,  aud  repent,  and  do  the 
first  works  ;  or  else  I  will  come  unto  thee  quickly,  and  will  remove  thy 
candlestick,  out  of  his  place,  except  thou  repent." — Revelation,  2  :  5. 

In  our  last  discourse  wc  endeavored  to  set  before  you  the 
advantages  resulting  from  the  possession  of  God's  oracles : 
the  words  which  we  have  just  read  will  lead  us  to  speak  of 
dangers  produced  by  their  neglect.  The  text  contains  an 
exhortation,  and  a  threatening,  with  which  we  have  evi- 
dently as  great  concern,  as  had  the  church  of  Ephesus  to 
which  they  were  originally  addressed.  The  exhortation — an 
exhortation  to  repentance — is  one  which  we  shall  do  well  to 
apply  to  ourselves  ;  the  threatening — a  threatening  that  the 
candlestick  shall  be  removed — may  take  effect  in  our  own 
days  as  well  as  in  earlier. 

Now  there  are  few  duties  to  which  men  are  more  fre- 
quently urged,  and  in  regard  to  which,  nevertheless,  they 
are  more  likely  to  be  deceived,  than  the  great  duty  of  re- 
pentance. It  is  of  the  first  importance,  that  the  exact  place 
and  nature  of  this  duty  should  be  accurately  denned  ;  for  so 
long  as  there  is  any  thing  of  misapprehension,  or  mistake,  in 
regard  to  repentance,  there  can  be  no  full  appreciation  of  the 
proffered  mercies  of  the  Gospel.  It  seems  to  be  too  common 
an  opinion,  that  repentance  is  a  kind  of  preparation,  or  pre- 
liminary, which  men  are  in  a  great  degree  to  effect  for  them- 


,.1  NEGLECT    OF    THE    (iOSTEL 

selves  before  they  can  go  to  Christ  as  a  mediator  and  propi 
nation.  Repentance  is  regarded  as  a  something  which  they 
have  to  do,  a  condition  they  have  to  perform,  in  order  that 
they  may  be  fitted  to  apply  to  the  Redeemer,  and  ask  a  share 
in  the  blessings  which  he  purchased  for  mankind.  We  do 
not,  of  course,  deny  that  there  must  be  repentance  before 
there  can  be  forgiveness ;  and  that  it  is  only  to  the  broken 
and  contrite  heart  that  Christ  extends  the  fruits  of  his  passion. 
We  say  to  every  man  who  may  be  inquiring  as  to  the  par- 
don of  sin,  except  you  repent  you  cannot  be  forgiven.  But 
the  question  is,  whether  a  man  must  wait  till  he  has  repented 
before  he  applies  to  Christ ;  whether  repentance  is  a  preli- 
minary which  he  has  to  effect,  ere  he  may  venture  to  seek 
to  a  mediator.  And  it  is  here,  as  we  think,  that  the  mistake 
lies,  a  mistake  which  turns  repentance  into  a  kind  of  obsta- 
cle between  the  sinner  and  Christ. 

The  scriptural  doctrine  in  regard  to  repentance  is  not. 
that  a  man  must  repent  in  order  to  his  being  qualified  to  go 
to  Christ ;  it  is  rather,  that  he  must  go  to  Christ  in  order  to 
his  being  enabled  to  repent.  And  the  difference  between 
these  propositions  is  manifest  and  fundamental.  There  would 
be  no  virtue  in  our  repentance,  even  if  we  could  repent  of 
ourselves,  to  recommend  us  to  the  favor  of  the  Redeemer ; 
but  there  goes  forth  virtue  from  the  Redeemer  himself, 
strengthening  us  for  that  repentance  which  is  alone  genuine 
and  acceptable.  St.  Peter  sufficiently  laid  down  this  doctrine, 
when  he  said  of  Christ  to  the  high  priest  and  Sadducees. 
"  him  hath  God  exalted  with  his  right  hand  to  be  a  Prince 
and  a  Savior,  for  to  give  repentance  to  Israel,  and  forgive- 
ness of  sins/'  Here  repentance  is  stated  to  be  as  much  the  gift 
of  the  glorified  Christ  as  forgiveness — a  statement  inconsist- 
ent with  the  notion,  that  repentance  is  something  which 
must  be  effected  without  Christ,  as  a  ground  on  which  to 
rest  our  application  to  him  for  pardon.  We  rather  gather 
from  these  words  of  the  apostle,  that  we  can  no  more  repent 
without  Christ  than  be  pardoned  without  Christ :  from  him 
comes  the  grace  of  contrition  as  well  as  the  cleansing  of 
expiation. 


FOLLOWED    BY    ITS    REMOVAL.  325 

There  may  indeed  be  the  abandonment  of  certain  vicious 
practices,  and  a  breaking  loose  from  habits  which  have  held 
the  soul  in  bondage.  Long  ere  the  man  thinks  of  applying 
to  Christ,  and  whilst  almost  a  stranger  to  his  name,  he  may 
make  a  great  advance  in  reformation  of  conduct,  renouncing 
much  which  his  conscience  has  declared  wrong,  and  enter- 
ing upon  duties  of  which  he  has  been  neglectful.  But  this 
comes  far  short  of  that  thorough  moral  change  which  is  in- 
tended by  the  inspired  writers,  when  they  speak  of  repent- 
ance. The  outward  conduct  may  be  amended,  whilst  no  at- 
tack is  made  on  the  love  of  sin  as  seated  in  the  heart ;  so  that 
the  change  may  be  altogether  on  the  surface,  and  extend  not 
to  the  affections  of  the  inner  man.  But  the  repentance,  re- 
quired of  those  who  are  forgiven  through  Christ,  is  a  radical 
change  oTmind  and  of  spirit ;  a  change  which  will  be  made 
apparent  by  a  corresponding  in  the  outward  deportment,  but 
whose  great  scene  is  within,  and  which  there  affects  every 
power  and  propensity  of  our  nature.  And  a  repentance  such 
as  this,  seeing  it  manifestly  lies  beyond  the  reach  of  our  own 
strivings,  is  only  to  be  obtained  from  Christ,  who  ascended 
up  on  high,  and  "  received  gifts  for  the  rebellious,"  becom- 
ing, in  his  exaltation,  the  source  and  dispenser  of  those  va- 
rious assistances  which  fallen  beings  need  as  probationers 
lor  eternity. 

What  then  is  it  which  a  man  has  to  do  who  is  desirous  of 
becoming  truly  repentant?  We  reply  that  his  great  business 
is  earnest  prayer  to  Christ,  that  he  would  give  him  the  Ho- 
ly Spirit,  to  enable  him  to  repent.  Of  course  we  do  not  mean 
that  he  is  to  confine  himself  to  prayer,  and  make  no  effort  at 
correcting  what  may  be  wrong  in  his  conduct.  The  sinceri- 
ty of  his  prayer  can  only  be  proved  by  the  vigor  of  his  en- 
deavor to  obey  God's  commands.  But  we  mean,  that,  along 
with  his  strenuousness  in  renouncing  evil  habits  and  asso- 
ciations, there  must  be  an  abiding  persuasion  that  repent- 
ance, as  well  as  forgiveness,  is  to  be  procured  through  no- 
thing but  the  atoning  sacrifice  of  Christ ;  and  this  persuasion 
must  make  him  unwearied  in  entreaty,  that  Christ  would 
send  into  his  soul  the  renovating  power.    It  may  be  urged 


^0  NEGLECT    OF    THE    GOSPEL 

that  Christ  pardons  none  but  the  penitent;  but  our  state- 
ment rather  is,  that  those  whom  he  pardons  he  first  makes 
penitent. 

And  shall  we  be  told  that  we  thus  reduce  man  below  the 
level  of  an  intelligent,  accountable  being  ;  making  him  alto- 
gether passive,  and  allotting  him  no  task  in  the  struggle  for 
immortality?  We  throw  back  the  accusation  as  altogether 
unfounded.  We  call  upon  man  for  the  stretch  of  every 
muscle,  and  the  strain  of  every  power.  As  to  his  being 
saved  in  indolence,  saved  in  inactivity,  he  may  as  well  look 
for  harvest  where  he  has  never  sown,  and  for  knowledge 
where  he  has  never  studied.  Is  it  to  be  an  idler,  is  it  to  be 
a  sluggard,  to  have  to  keep  down  that  pride  which  would 
keep  him  from  Christ ;  to  be  wrestling  with  those  passions 
which  the  light  that  is  in  him  shows  must  be  mortified  ;  to 
be  unwearied  in  petition  for  the  assistances  of  the  Spirit,  and 
in  using  such  helps  as  have  been  already  vouchsafed  ?  If 
this  be  idleness,  that  man  is  an  idler  who  is  actuated  by  the 
consciousness,  that  he  can  no  more  repent,  than  be  pardon- 
ed, without  Christ.  But  if  it  be  to  task  a  man  to  the  utmost 
of  his  energy,  to  prescribe  that  he  go  straightway  for  every 
thing  which  he  needs  to  an  invisible  Mediator  ;  go,  in  spite 
of  the  opposition  of  the  flesh  ;  go,  though  the  path  lies  through 
resisting  inclinations  ;  go,  though  in  going  he  must  abase  him- 
self in  the  dust,  and  proclaim  his  own  nothingness  ;  then  we 
are  exhorting  the  impenitent  to  the  mightiest  of  labors,  when 
we  exhort  them  to  seek  repentance  as  Christ's  gift.  The 
assigning  its  true  place  to  repentance  ;  the  destroying  the 
notion  that  repentance  is  to  be  effected  for  ourselves,  and 
then  to  recommend  us  to  the  Savior  ;  this,  in  place  of  telling 
men  that  they  have  little  or  nothing  to  do,  is  the  urging 
them  to  diligence  by  showing  how  it  may  be  successful  ; 
and  to  effort,  by  pointing  out  the  alone  channel  through 
which  it  can  prevail.  And  if  there  be  given  to  the  angel  of 
a  church  the  same  commission  as  was  given  to  the  angel  of 
the  church  at  Ephesus,  so  that  he  must  come  down  upon  a 
careless  or  backsliding  congregation  with  a  stern  and  start- 
ling summons  :  never  let  it  be  thought  that  he  either  keeps 


FOLLOWED    BY    ITS    REMOVAL.  327 

out  of  sight  the  moral  inabilities  of  man,  or  urges  to  an  inert 
and  idle  dependence,  when  he  expatiates  on  the  necessity, 
and  exhorts  to  the  duty,  of  repentance — he  is  preaching  that 
Christ  is  all  in  all,  and  nevertheless  he  is  animating  his 
hearers  to  strive  for  the  mastery,  and  struggle  for  deliver- 
ance, when  he  entreats  them  in  the  \\sords  of  our  text,  to 
"  remember  from  whence  they  are  fallen,  and  repent,  and 
do  the  first  works." 

But  there  is  more  in  this  exhortation  than  the  summons 
to  repentance  :  memory  is  appealed  to  as  an  assistant  in  the 
duty  to  which  men  are  called.  In  other  parts  of  Scripture 
we  find  great  worth  attached  to  consideration — as  when  the 
Psalmist  says,  "  I  thought  on  my  ways,  and  turned  my  feet 
to  thy  testimonies."  Here  the  turning  to  God's  testimonies 
is  given  by  David  as  an  immediate  consequence  on  the 
thinking  on  his  ways,  as  though  consideration  were  alone 
necessary  to  insure  a  speedy  repentance.  The  great  evil 
with  the  mass  of  men  is,  that,  so  far  at  least  as  eternity  is 
concerned,  they  never  think  at  all — once  make  them  think, 
and  you  make  them  anxious ;  once  make  them  anxious,  and 
they  will  labor  to  be  saved.  When  a  man  considers  his 
ways,  angels  may  be  said  to  prepare  their  harps,  as  knowing 
that  they  shall  soon  have  to  sweep  them  in  exultation  at  his 
repentance. 

And  it  is  urging  you  to  this  consideration,  to  urge  you  to 
the  remembering  from  whence  you  are  fallen.  We  all  know 
what  a  power  there  is  in  memory,  when  made  to  array  be- 
fore the  guilty  days  and  scenes  of  comparative  innocence. 
Ft  is  with  an  absolutely  crushing  might  that  the  remem- 
brance of  the  years  and  home  of  his  boyhood  will  come  upon 
the  criminal,  when  brought  to  a  pause  in  his  career  of  mis- 
doing, and  perhaps  about  to  suffer  its  penalties.  If  we  knew 
his  early  history,  and  it  would  bear  us  out  in  the  attempt, 
we  should  make  it  our  business  to  set  before  him  the  scenery 
of  his  native  village,  the  cottage  where  he  was  born,  the 
school  to  which  he  was  sent,  the  church  where  he  first  heard 
the  preached  Gospel ;  and  we  should  call  to  his  recollection 
the  father  and  the  mother,  long-  since  gathered  to  their  rest. 


328  NEGLECT    OF    THE    GOSPEL 

who  made  him  kneel  down  night  and  morning,  and  who  in- 
structed him  out  of  the  Bible,  and  who  warned  him,  even 
with  tears,  against  evil  ways  and  evil  companions.  "We 
should  remind  him  how  peacefully  his  days  then  glided 
away  ;  with  how  much  of  happiness  he  was  blessed  in  pos- 
session, how  much  of  hope  in  prospect.  And  he  may  be  now 
a  hardened  and  desperate  man  :  but  we  will  never  believe, 
that,  as  his  young  days  were  thus  passing  before  him,  and 
the  reverend  forms  of  his  parents  came  back  from  the  grave, 
and  the  trees  that  grew  round  his  birth-place  waved  over  him 
their  foliage,  and  he  saw  himself  once  more  as  he  was  in 
early  life,  when  he  knew  crime  but  by  name,  and  knew  if 
only  to  abhor — we  will  never  believe  that  he  could  be  proof 
against  this  mustering  of  the  past— he  might  be  proof  against 
invective,  proof  against  reproach,  proof  against  remonstrance ; 
but  when  we  brought  memory  to  bear  upon  him,  and  bade 
it  people  itself  with  all  the  imagery  of  youth,  we  believe  that, 
for  the  moment  at  least,  the  obdurate  being  would  be  sub- 
dued, and  a  sudden  gush  of  tears  prove  that  we  had  opened 
a  long  sealed-up  fountain. 

And  we  know  no  reason  why  there  should  not  be  a  like 
power  in  memory,  in  cases  which  have  no  analogy  with 
this,  except  in  the  general  fact,  that  men  are  not  what  they 
were.  If  we  array  before  us  the  records  of  man's  pristine; 
condition,  and  avail  ourselves  of  such  intelligence  as  it  hath 
pleased  God  to  vouchsafe,  we  may  with  sufficient  truth  be 
said  to  remember  whence  we  fell.  And  very  energetic  and 
persuasive  would  be  this  remembrance.  We  should  feel  that 
we  were  gaining  a  great  moral  hold  on  a  man,  if  we  prevail- 
ed on  him  to  contrast  what  he  is,  with  what  Adam  was  ere 
he  ate  the  forbidden  fruit.  It  is  a  contrast  which  must  pro- 
duce the  sense  of  utter  degradation.  The  waving  trees  of 
Paradise,  and  the  glorious  freshness  of  the  young  creation, 
and  the  unrestrained  intercourse  with  God,  and  the  beautiful 
tranquillity  of  human  life — these  will  make  the  same  kind  of 
appeal,  as  the  fields  where  we  played  in  our  boyhood,  and 
the  roof  which  sheltered  us  whilst  yet  untutored  in  the  vices, 
and  unblenched  by  the  sorrows,  of  the  world.  I  was  by  crea- 


FOLLOWED    BY    ITS    REMOVAL.  329 

lion  a  lofty  being,  with  a  comprehensive  understanding,  a 
will  that  always  moved  in  harmony  with  the  divine,  and 
affections  that  fastened  on  the  sublime  and  indestructible.  I 
am,  through  apostasy,  a  wayward  thing,  with  crippled  ener- 
gies, contracted  capacities,  and  desires  engrossed  by  the  pe- 
rishable. I  had  a  body  that  was  heir  to  no.  decay,  a  soul  rich 
in  the  impress  of  Deity ;  but  now  I  must  go  down  to  the 
dust,  and  traces  of  the  defaced  image  are  scarcely  to  be 
found  on  my  spirit.  I  had  heaven  before  me,  and  might  have 
entered  it  through  an  obedience  which  could  hardly  be 
called  a  trial ;  but  now,  depraved  in  inclination,  and  debased 
in  power,  to  what  can  I  look  forward  but  tribulation  and 
wrath?  Oh,  this  it  is  to  remember  from  whence  I  am  fallen. 
And  if  I  have  been,  like  the  Ephesian  Church,  what  Scrip- 
ture calls  a  backslider,  may  not  memory  tell  me  of  comforts 
I  experienced,  when  walking  closely  with  God,  of  seasons 
of  deep  gladness  when  I  had  mortified  a  passion,  of  commu- 
nion with  eternity  so  real  and  distinct  that  I  seemed  already 
delivered  from  the  trammels  of  flesh  ?  It  may  well  be,  if  in- 
deed I  have  declined  in  godliness,  that,  though  musing  on 
past  times,  there  will  be  excited  within  me  a  poignant  regret. 
There  will  come  back  upon  me,  as  upon  the  criminal  in  his 
cell,  the  holy  music  of  better  days  ;  and  there  will  be  a  pene- 
trating power  in  the  once  gladdening  but  now  melancholy 
strain,  which  there  would  not  be  in  the  shrill  note  of  ven- 
geance. And  thus  in  each  case,  memory  may  be  a  mighty 
agent  in  bringing  me  to  repentance.  It  can  scarcely  come  to 
pass,  that  I  should  diligently  and  seriously  remember  whence 
I  am  fallen,  and  yet  be  conscious  of  no  desire  to  regain  the 
lost  position.  I  cannot  gaze  on  Paradise,  and  not  long  to 
leave  the  wilderness ;  I  cannot  see  in  myself  the  wanderer, 
and  not  yearn  for  the  home  I  have  forsaken.  And  therefore 
is  there  a  beautiful  appropriateness  in  the  message  with 
which  St.  John  was  charged  to  the  angel  of  the  church  at 
Ephesus.  We  know  that  except  men  repent,  except  the  in- 
different be  roused  to  earnestness,  the  backsliding  recovered 
to  consistency,  nothing  can  prevent  their  final  destruction. 
And  wishing  to  bring  them  to  repentance,  we  would  waken 
42 


330  NEGLECT    01     THE    GOSPEL 

memory  from  her  thousand  cells,  and  bid  her  pour  forth  the 
imagery  of  what  they  were,  that  they  may  contrast  it  with 
what  they  are.  If  we  can  arm  against  them  their  own  recol- 
lections, we  feel  that  we  shall  have  brought  to  bear  the  most 
powerful  of  engines.  Our  appeal  is  therefore  to  the  past,  our 
summons  is  to  the  shades  of  the  dead.  And  though  we  know 
that  no  remonstrance,  and  no  exhortation,  can  be  of  avail, 
except  as  carried  to  the  heart  by  the  Spirit  of  the  living  God; 
yet  are  we  so  persuaded  of  the  power  of  consideration,  and 
of  the  likelihood  that  those  who  are  brought  to  consider  their 
ways  will  go  on  to  reform  them,  that  we  think  we  prescribe 
what  cannot  fail  of  success,  when,  in  order  that  men  may 
repent,  we  entreat  them,  in  the  words  of  our  text,  to  remem- 
ber from  whence  they  are  fallen,  and  do  the  first  works. 

But  we  turn  from  the  exhortation  to  the  threatening  con- 
tained in  our  textj  "  I  will  come  unto  thee  quickly,  and  will 
remove  thy  candlestick  out  of  his  place,  except  thou  repent." 
It  is  not  difficult  to  determine  what  the  calamity  is  which  is 
figuratively  denoted  by  the  removal  of  the  candlestick.   St. 
John  had  beheld  one  like  unto  the  Son  of  man.  magnificent- 
ly and  mysteriously  arrayed,  standing  in  the  midst  of  seven 
golden  candlesticks,  and  holding  in  his  right  hand  seven 
stars.    The  evangelist  is  expressly  informed  that  the  seven 
stars  are  the  angels,  or  bishops,  of  the  seven  churches ;  and 
that  the  seven  candlesticks  are  those  churches  themselves. 
Hence  the   candlestick  represents  the  christian  church  as 
erected  in  any  land ;  and  therefore  the  removing  the  candle- 
stick out  of  his  place  can  mean  nothing  less  than  the  un- 
churching a  nation,  the  so  withdrawing  from  them  the  Gos- 
pel that  they  shall  lose  the  distinctive  marks  of  a  christian 
community.    We  need  not  be  over-careful  as  to  the  exact- 
ness with  which  we  preserve  the  metaphor.    If  the  candle- 
stick be  removed,  the  meaning  must  be  that  the  spiritual 
light  is  removed ;  or  that  a  land  which  has  been  blessed  with 
a  knowledge  of  Christianity,  avid  thereby  brought  specially 
into  covenant  with  God,  is  deprived  of  the  advantages  which 
it  has  failed  to  improve,  and  dislodged  from  the  relationship 
into  which  it  had  been  admitted. 


FOLLOWED    BY    ITS    REMOVAL.  331 

And  this  may  take  place,  for  undoubtedly  this  has  taken 
place.  There  are  indeed  clear  and  encouraging  promises  in 
Scripture,  sufficient  to  assure  us  that  neither  outward  oppo- 
sition, nor  inward  corruption,  shall  prevail  to  the  extinction 
of  Christ's  church  upon  earth.  But  these  promises  refer  gene- 
rally to  the  church,  and  not  to  this  or  that  of  its  sections. 
They  give  no  ground  for  expecting  that  the  church,  for  ex- 
ample, of  England,  or  the  church  of  Rome,  will  never  cease 
to  be  a  church — on  the  contrary,  their  tenor  is  quite  com- 
patible with  the  supposition,  that  England  or  Rome  may  so 
pervert,  or  abuse,  the  Gospel,  as  to  provoke  God  to  withdraw 
it,  and  give  it  to  lands  now  overrun  with  heathenism.  There 
may  be,  and  there  are,  promises  that  there  shall  be  always  a 
candle  in  the  world  ;  but  the  candlestick  is  a  moveable  thing, 
and  may  be  placed  successively  in  different  districts  of  the 
earth. 

And  we  say  that  this  unchurching  of  a  nation  is  what  has 
actually  occurred,  and  what  therefore  may  occur  again,  if 
mercies  be  abused,  and  privileges  neglected.  We  appeal  to 
the  instance  of  the  Jews.  The  Jews  constituted  the  church 
of  God,  whilst  all  other  tribes  of  the  human  population  were 
strangers  and  aliens.  And  never  were  a  people  more  belov- 
ed ;  never  had  a  nation  greater  evidences  of  divine  favor  on 
which  to  rest  a  persuasion  that  they  should  not  be  cast  off 
and  deprived  of  their  advantages.  Yet  how  completely  has 
the  candlestick  been  removed  from  Judea.  The  land  of 
Abraham,  and  of  Isaac,  and  of  Jacob ;  the  land  which  held 
the  ark  with  its  mysterious  and  sacramental  treasures ;  the 
land  where  priests  made  atonement,  and  prophets  delivered 
their  lofty  anticipations:  the  land  which  Jesus  trode,  where 
Jesus  preached,  and  where  Jesus  died  ;  has  been  tenanted  for 
centuries  by  the  unbeliever,  profaned  by  the  followers,  and 
desecrated  by  the  altars,  of  the  Arabian  impostor. 

We  appeal  again  to  the  early  churches.  Where  are  those 
christian  societies  to  which  St.  Paul  and  St.  John  inscribed 
their  epistles  ?  Where  is  the  Corinthian  church,  so  affection- 
ately addressed,  though  so  boldly  reproved,  by  the  great 
apostle  of  the  Gentiles  ?     Where  is  the  Philippian  church, 


332  NEGLECT    OF    THE    GOSPEL 

where  the  Colossian,  where  the  Thessalonian,  the  letters  to 
which  prove  how  cordially  Christianity  had  been  received^ 
and  how  vigorously  it  flourished  ?  Where  are  the  Seven 
Churches  of  Asia,  respecting  which  we  are  assured  that 
they  were  once  strenuous  in  piety,  and  gave  promise  of  per- 
manence in  Christian  profession  and  privilege  ?  Alas,  how 
true  is  it  that  the  candlesticks  have  been  removed.  Countries 
in  which  the  Gospel  was  first  planted,  cities  where  it  took 
earliest  root,  from  these  have  all  traces  of  Christianity  long 
ago  disappeared,  and  in  these  has  the  cross  been  supplanted 
by  the  crescent.  The  traveler  through  lands,  where  apostles 
won  their  noblest  victories,  where  martyrs  witnessed  a  good 
confession,  and  thousands  sprang  eagerly  forwards  to  be 
"  baptized  for  the  dead,"  and  to  fill  up  every  breach  which 
persecution  made  in  the  christian  ranks,  can  scarce  find  a 
monument  to  assure  him  that  he  stands  where  once  congre- 
gated the  followers  of  Jesus.  Every  where  he  is  surrounded 
by  superstitions  little  better  than  those  of  heathenism,  so  that 
the  unchurching  of  these  lands  has  been  the  giving  them  up 
to  an  Egyptian  darkness.  And  what  are  we  to  say  of  such 
facts,  except  that  they  prove — prove  with  a  clearness  and 
awfulness  of  demonstration,  which  leave  ignorance  inexcu- 
sable, and  indifference  self-condemned — that  the  blessings 
of  Christianity  are  deposited  with  a  nation  to  be  valued  and 
improved,  and  that  to  despise  or  misuse  them  is  to  provoke 
their  withdrawment  ?  If  we  could  trace  the  histories  of  the 
several  churches  to  which  we  have  referred,  we  should  find 
that  they  all  "  left  their  first  love,"  grew  lukewarm  in  reli- 
gion, or  were  daunted  by  danger  into  apostasy.  There  was 
no  lack  of  warning,  none  of  exhortation  ;  for  it  is  never  sud- 
denly, never  without  a  protracted  struggle,  that  God  proceeds 
to  extremes,  whether  with  a  church  or  an  individual.  But 
warning  and  exhortation  were  in  vain.  False  teachers 
grew  into  favor  ;  false  doctrines  superseded  the  true  ;  with 
erroneous  tenets  came  their  general  accompaniment,  disso- 
lute practice  ;  till  at  length,  if  the  candlestick  remained,  the 
light  was  extinct ;  and  then  God  gave  the  sentence,  that  the 
candlestick  should  be  removed  out  of  his  place. 


FOLLOWED    BY    ITS    REMOVAL.  333 

And  never  let  it  be  thought  that  such  sentence  is  of  no 
very  terrible  and  desolating  character.  Come  any  thing  ra- 
ther than  that.  Come  foreign  invasion,  come  domestic  in- 
subordination, come  famine,  come  pestilence.  Come  any  evil 
rather  than  the  unchurching  which  is  threatened  in  our  text, 
it  is  the  sorest  thing  which  God  can  do  against  a  land.  He 
himself  represents  it  as  such,  when  sending  messages  of  wo 
by  the  mouth  of  his  servant  Amos.  "  Behold  the  days  come, 
saith  the  Lord  God,  that  I  will  send  a  famine  in  the  land, 
not  a  famine  of  bread,  nor  a  thirst  for  water,  but  of  hearing 
the  words  of  the  Lord."  The  blasting  the  fruits  of  the  earth, 
so  that  the  vallies  should  not  yield  their  accustomed  abun- 
dance— this  would  be  a  fearful  thing,  but  there  was  to  be 
something  more  fearful  than  this.  The  drying  up  the  foun- 
tains, and  the  cutting  off  the  streams — this  would  be  a  griev- 
ous dispensation,  but  there  was  to  be  something  more  griev- 
ous than  this.  The  suspension  of  all  messages  from  heaven, 
the  cessation  of  that  intercourse  which  had  subsisted  be- 
tween the  people  and  God,  the  removal  of  the  light  of  reve- 
lation— this  was  the  threatened  evil,  which  would  make 
comparatively  inconsiderable  the  dearth  of  the  bread,  and 
the  want  of  the  water.  Every  other  calamity  may  be  sent  in 
mercy,  and  have  for  its  design  the  correction,  and  not  the 
destruction,  of  its  subjects.  But  this  calamity  has  none  of 
the  character  of  a  fatherly  chastisement.  It  shows  that  God 
has  done  with  a  people  ;  that  he  will  no  longer  strive  with 
them  ;  but  that  henceforwards  he  gives  them  up  to  their  own 
wretched  devices. 

And,  therefore,  with  the  removal  of  the  Gospel  must  be 
the  departure  of  whatever  is  most  precious  in  the  possessions 
of  a  people.  It  is  not  merely  that  Christianity  is  taken  away — 
though  who  shall  measure,  who  imagine,  the  loss,  if  this 
were  indeed  all?— but  it  is  that  God  must  frown  on  a  land 
from  which  he  hath  been  provoked  to  withdraw  his  Gospel ; 
and  that,  if  the  frown  of  the  Almighty  rest  on  a  country,  the 
sun  of  that  country's  greatness  goes  rapidly  down,  and  the 
dreariness  of  a  moral  midnight  fast  gathers  above  it,  and 
around  it.    Has  it  not  been  thus  with  countries,  and  with 


334  NEGLECT    OF    THE    GOSPEL 

cities,  to  which  we  have  already  referred,  and  from  which; 
on  account  of  their  iniquities  and  impieties,  the  candlestick 
lias  been  removed  ?  The  seven  Churches  of  Asia,  where  are 
the  cities  whence  they  drew  their  names ;  cities  that  teemed 
with  inhabitants,  that  were  renowned  for  arts,  and  which 
served  as  centres  of  civilization  to  far-spreading  districts? 
Did  the  unchurching  these  cities  leave  them  their  majesty 
and  prosperity;  did  the  removal  of  the  candlestick  leave  un- 
dimmed  their  political  lustre?  Ask  the  traveler  who  gropes 
painfully  his  way  over  prostrate  columns,  and  beneath  crum- 
bling arches,  having  no  index  but  ruins  to  tell  him  that  a 
kingdom's  dust  is  under  his  feet;  and  endeavoring  to  assure 
himself,  from  the  magnitude  of  the  desolation,  that  he  has 
found  the  site  of  a  once  splendid  metropolis?  The  cities, 
with  scarce  an  exception,  wasted  from  the  day  when  the 
candlestick  was  removed,  and  grew  into  monuments — mo- 
numents whose  marble  is  decay,  and  whose  inscription  de- 
vastation— telling  out  to  all  succeeding  ages,  that  the  readiest 
mode  in  which  a  nation  can  destroy  itself,  is  to  despise  the 
Gospel  with  which  it  has  been  intrusted,  and  that  the  most 
fearful  vial  which  God  can  empty  on  a  land,  is  that  which 
extinguishes  the  blessed  shillings  of  Christianity. 

Oh,  it  may  be  the  thought  of  those  who  care  little  for  the 
Gospel,  and  who  have  never  opened  their  hearts  to  its  gra- 
cious communications,  that  it  would  be  no  overwhelming 
calamity,  if  God  fulfilled  his  threat,  and  removed  the  candle- 
stick out  of  his  place.  They  may  think  that  the  springs  of 
national  prosperity,  and  national  happiness,  would  be  left 
untouched  ;  and  that  the  unchurched  people  might  still  have 
their  fleets  on  every  sea,  still  gather  into  their  lap  the  riches 
of  the  earth,  and  sit  undisturbed  a  sovereign  among  the 
nations.  I  know  not  how  far  such  might  be  actually  the 
case.  I  know  not  how  far  the  conquests  or  the  commerce 
of  a  country  might  remain  unaffected  by  the  loss  of  its 
Christianity.  But  this  I  know,  that  God's  blessing  could  no 
longer  rest  on  its  victories,  or  accompany  its  trade  ;  and  that, 
therefore,  if  its  armies  triumphed,  the  triumph  would  be  vir- 
tually defeat ;  and  if  its  ships  were  richly  freighted,  it  would 


FOLLOWED    BY    ITS    REMOVAL.  335 

be  with  fruits,  which,  like  the  fabled  ones  from  the  Dead 
Sea's  shore,  turn  to  ashes  in  the  mouth.  No,  we  again  say, 
come  any  thing  rather  than  this.  Come  barrenness  into  our 
soil ;  come  discord  into  our  councils  ;  come  treason  into  our 
camps  ;  come  wreck  into  our  navies — but  let  us  not  be  un- 
churched as  a  nation.  We  may  be  beloved  of  God,  and  He 
may  have  purposes  of  mercy  towards  us,  whilst  he  takes 
from  us  our  temporal  advantages,  but  still  leaves  us  our  spi- 
ritual. He  may  be  only  disciplining  us  as  a  parent ;  and  the 
discipline  proves,  not  merely  that  there  is  need,  but  that  there 
is  room  for  repentance.  But  if  Ave  were  once  deprived  of 
the  Gospel ;  if  the  Bible  ceased  to  circulate  amongst  our 
people  ;  if  there  were  no  longer  the  preaching  of  Christ  in 
our  churches  ;  if  we  were  left  to  set  up  reason  instead  of  re- 
velation, to  bow  the  knee  to  the  God  of  our  own  imagina- 
tions, and  to  burn  unhallowed  incense  before  the  idols  which 
the  madness  of  speculation  would  erect — then  farewell,  a 
long  farewell,  to  all  that  has  given  dignity  to  our  state,  and 
happiness  to  our  homes  ;  the  true  foundations  of  true  great- 
ness would  be  all  undermined,  the  bulwarks  of  real  liberty 
shaken,  the  springs  of  peace  poisoned,  the  sources  of  prospe- 
rity dried  up  ;  and  a  coming  generation  would  have  to  add 
our  name  to  those  of  countries  whose  national  decline  has 
kept  pace  with  their  religious,  and  to  point  to  our  fate  as 
exhibiting  the  awful  comprehensiveness  of  the  threat,  "  I 
will  come  unto  thee  quickly,  and  will  remove  thy  candle- 
stick out  of  his  place,  except  thou  repent." 

But  we  rejoice  in  pronouncing  this  a  doom,  respecting 
which  we  do  not  augur  a  likelihood  that  it  will  fall  on  this 
kingdom.  There  may  have  been  periods  in  the  history  of 
this  land,  when  the  upholders  of  true  religion  had  cause  for 
gloomy  forebodiugs,  and  for  fears  that  God  would  unchurch 
our  nation.  And  some  indeed  may  be  disposed  to  regard  the 
present  as  a  period  when  such  forebodings  and  fears  might 
be  justly  entertained.  They  may  think  that  so  great  is  the 
array  of  hostility  against  the  national  church,  that  the  most 
sanguine  can  scarce  venture  to  hope  that  the  candlestick 
will  not  be  cast  down.  We  cannot  subscribe  to  this  opinion. 


336  NEGLECT    OF    THE    GOSPEL 

We  are  not  indeed  blind  to  the  amount  of  opposition  to  the 
national  church  ;  neither  have  we  the  least  doubt,  that  the 
destruction  of  this  church  would  give  a  fatal  blow  to  the 
national  Christianity.  We  dare  not  indeed  say  that  God 
might  not  preserve  amongst  us  a  pure  Christianity,  if  the 
national  church  were  overthrown.  But  we  are  bold  to  affirm, 
that  hitherto  has  the  church  been  the  grand  engine  in  effect- 
ing such  preservation  ;  and  that  we  should  have  no  right  to 
expect,  if  we  dislocated  this  engine,  that  results  would  not 
follow  disastrous  to  religion.  I  could  not  contend  for  the  Es- 
tablished Church,  merely  because  venerable  by  its  antiquity, 
because  hallowed  by  the  solemn  processions  of  noble  thought 
which  have  issued  from  its  recesses,  or  because  the  prayers 
and  praises  which  many  generations  have  breathed  through 
its  services,  seem  mysteriously  to  haunt  its  temples,  that 
they  may  be  echoed  by  the  tongues  of  the  living.  But  as  the 
great  safeguard  and  propagator  of  unadulterated  Christianity  ; 
the  defender,  by  her  articles,  of  what  is  sound  in  doctrine, 
and,  by  her  constitution,  of  what  is  apostolic  in  government ; 
the  represser,  by  the  simple  majesty  of  her  ritual,  of  all  ex- 
travagance ;  the  encourager,  by  its  fervor,  of  an  ardent  piety — 
I  can  contend  for  the  continuance  amongst  us  of  the  Esta- 
blishment, as  I  would  for  the  continuance  of  the  Gospel ;  I 
can  deprecate  its  removal  as  the  removal  of  our  candlestick. 
It  is  not  then  because  we  are  blind  to  the  opposition  to  the 
national  church,  or  fail  to  identify  this  church  with  the  na- 
tional Christianity,  that  we  share  not  the  fears  of  those  who 
would  now  prophesy  evil.  But  we  feel  that  danger  is  only 
bringing  out  the  strength  of  the  church,  and  that  her  effi- 
ciency has  increased  as  her  existence  has  been  menaced. 
The  threatening  of  our  text  belongs  to  the  lukewarm  and 
the  indolent;  its  very  language  proves  that  it  ceases  to  be 
applicable,  if  it  have  fanned  the  embers,  and  strung  the  en- 
ergies. We  believe  of  an  apostolic  church,  that  it  can  die 
only  by  suicide  ;  and  where  are  our  fears  of  suicide,  when 
enmity  has  but  produced  greater  zeal  in  winning  souls  to 
Christ,  and  hatred  been  met  by  increased  efforts  to  dissemi- 
nate the  religion  of  love  ? 


FOLLOWED    BY    ITS    REMOVAL.  337 

We  might  not  have  ventured  to  introduce  these  observa- 
tions, in  concluding  our  discourses  before  this  assembly,  had 
we  not  felt  that  the  church  stands  or  falls  with  the  univer- 
sities of  the  land,  and  that  the  present  condition  of  this  uni- 
versity more  than  warrants  our  belief  that  the  candlestick  is 
not  about  to  be  removed.  It  is  a  gratification,  not  to  be  ex- 
pressed, to  find,  after  a  few  years'  absence,  what  a  growing 
attention  there  has  been  to  those  noblest  purposes  for  which 
colleges  were  founded  ;  and  how  the  younger  part,  more  es- 
pecially, of  our  body,  whence  are  to  be  draughted  the  minis- 
ters of  our  parishes,  and  the  most  influential  of  our  laity,  have 
advanced  in  respect  for  religion,  and  attention  to  its  duties. 
One  who  has  been  engaged  in  other  scenes  may  perhaps 
better  judge  the  advance  than  those  under  whose  eye  it  has 
proceeded  ;  and  if  testimony  may  derive  worth  from  its  sin- 
cerity, when  it  cannot  from  the  station  of  the  party  who  gives 
it,  there  will  be  borne  strong  witness  by  him  who  addresses 
you,  that  not  only  is  the  fire  of  genius  here  cherished,  and 
the  lamp  of  philosophy  trimmed  ;  but  that  here  the  candle, 
which  God  hath  lighted  for  a  world  sitting  in  darkness, 
burns  brightly,  and  that,  therefore,  though  enemies  may  be 
fierce,  the  candlestick  is  firm. 

But  suffer  me,  my  younger  brethren,  to  entreat  you  that 
you  would  think  more  and  more  of  your  solemn  responsi- 
bility. I  cannot  compute  the  amount  of  influence  you  may 
wield  over  the  destinies  of  the  church  and  the  country.  In 
a  few  years  you  will  be  scattered  over  the  land,  occupying 
different  stations,  and  filling  different  parts  in  society.  And 
it  is  because  we  hope  you  will  go  hence  with  religion  in  the 
heart,  that  we  venture  to  predict  good,  and  not  evil.  We 
entreat  you  to  take  heed  that  you  disappoint  not  the  hope, 
and  thus  defeat  the  prediction.  We  could  almost  dare  to  say 
that  you  have  the  majesty,  and  the  Christianity,  of  the  empire 
in  your  keeping ;  and  we  beseech  you,  therefore,  to  "  flee 
youthful  lusts,"  as  you  would  the  plots  of  treason,  and  to 
follow  the  high  biddings  of  godliness,  as  you  would  the 
trumpet-call  of  patriotism.  Your  vices,  they  must  shake  the 
candlestick,  which  God  in  his  mercy  hath  planted  in  this 
43 


338  NEGLECT    OF    THE    GOSFEL,  &c 

land,  and  with  whose  stability  he  has  associated  the  great- 
ness of  the  state,  and  the  happiness  of  its  families.  But  your 
quiet  and  earnest  piety  ;  your  submission  to  the  precepts  of 
the  Gospel ;  your  faithful  discharge  of  appointed  duties ; 
these  will  help  to  give  fixedness  to  the  candlestick— and 
there  may  come  the  earthquake  of  political  convulsion,  or 
the  onset  of  infidel  assault,  but  Christianity  shall  not  be  over- 
thrown ;  and  we  shall  therefore  still  know  that  "  the  Lord 
of  Hosts  is  with  us,  that  the  God  of  Jacob  is  our  refuge.'; 


S ERMONS 


PREACHED 


BEFORE    THE   UNIVERSITY    OF   CAMBRIDGE, 


February,   1837, 


The  publication  of  the  following  Sermons  was  strongly  requested 
by  many  of  those  who  had  heard  them  delivered.  The  Author  was 
thus  placed  under  the  same  circumstances  as  a  year  ago,  when  he 
had  discharged  the  duties  of  Select  Preacher  before  the  University. 
He  felt  that  it  would  not  become  him  to  act  differently  on  the  two 
occasions;  and  he  can  now  only  express  his  earnest  hope  that  dis- 
courses, which  were  listened  to  with  singular  kindness  and  atten- 
tion, may  be  perused  with  some  measure  of  advantage. 

Camberwell,  March  4,  1837. 


SERMON    I. 


THE  UNNATURALNESS  OF   DISOBEDIENCE  TO  THE 
GOSPEL. 


"  O  foolish  Galatians,  who  hath  bewitched  you,  that  ye  should  not  obey  the 
truth  ;  before  whose  eyes  Jesus  Christ  hath  been  evidently  set  forth,  cru- 
cified among  you  1" — Galatians,  3:1. 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  the  Galatians,  here  addressed, 
were  not  Jews  ;  neither  had  they  been  dwellers  in  Jerusalem, 
when  Christ  died  upon  the  cross.  It  was  not  therefore  true 
of  them,  any  more  than  of  ourselves,  that,  with  the  bodily 
eye,  they  had  beheld  Jesus  crucified.  If  the  Savior  had 
been  evidently  set  forth  before  the  Galatians,  sacrificed  for 
sin,  it  could  only  have  been  in  the  same  manner  as  he  is  set 
before  us,  through  the  preaching  of  the  word,  and  the  admi- 
nistration of  the  Sacraments.  There  was  no  engine  brought 
to  bear  on  the  Galatians,  except  that  of  the  miracles  which 
the  first  teachers  wrought,  which  is  not  also  brought  to  bear 
upon  us  ;  and  the  miracles  were  of  no  avail,  except  to  the 
making  good  points  on  which  we  profess  ourselves  already 
convinced.  If  therefore  the  very  Gospel  which  St.  Paul 
preached  be  preached  in  our  hearing,  and  the  very  Sacra- 
ments which  he  administered  be  administered  in  our  assem- 
blies, it  may  be  said  of  us,  with  as  much  propriety  as  of  the 
Galatians,  that  "  Jesus  Christ  hath  been  evidently  set  forth, 
crucified  among  us." 

The  greater  distance  at  which  we  stand  from  the  intro- 
duction of  Christianity  does  not  necessarily  occasion  any 
greater  indistinctness  in  the  exhibition  of  the  Savior.     It 


34-2  THE     UNNATURAI.NESS    OF 

was  not  the  proximity  of  the  Galatians  to  the  time  of  the 
crucifixion  which  caused  Christ  to  appear  as  though  cruci- 
ried  among  them  ;  for  once  let  a  truth  become  an  object  of 
faith,  not  of  sight,  and  it  must  make  way  by  the  same  pro- 
cess at  different  times — there  may  he  diversity  in  the  evi- 
dence by  which  it  is  sustained,  there  is  none  in  the  manner 
in  which  it  is  apprehended. 

We  may  therefore  bring  down  our  text  to  present  days, 
and  regard  it  as  applicable,  in  every  part,  to  ourselves. 
There  are  two  chief  topics  which  will  demand  to  be  handled. 
You  observe  that  the  apostle  speaks  of  it  as  so  singular,  that 
men  should  disobey  the  truth,  that  he  can  only  ascribe  it  to 
sorcery  or  fascination.  You  observe  also  that  he  grounds  this 
opinion  on  the  fact,  that  Christianity  had  been  so  propounded 
to  these  men,  that  Christ  himself  might  be  said  to  have  been 
crucified  among  them.  We  shall  invert  the  order  of  the  text, 
believing  that  it  may  be  thus  most  practically  considered.  In 
the  first  place,  it  will  be  our  endeavor  to  show  you,  that  there 
is  nothing  exaggerated  in  our  declaring  of  yourselves,  that 
"  before  your  eyes  Christ  Jesus  hath  been  evidently  set  forth, 
crucified  among  you."  In  the  second  place,  we  shall  make 
this  fact  a  basis  on  which  to  ground  a  question  to  those  who 
are  yet  neglectful  of  the  soul,  ':  Who  hath  bewitched  you 
that  ye  should  not  obey  the  truth  ?" 

Now  we  are  bold  to  claim  at  once  a  high  character  for  the 
ministrations  of  the  Gospel,  and  shall  not  attempt  to  construct 
a  labored  proof  of  their  power.  We  do  not  substantiate  our 
claim  by  any  reference  to  the  wisdom  or  energy  of  the  men 
by  whom  these  ministrations  may  be  conducted  ;  for  Paul 
may  plant,  and  Apollos  water,  but  God  alone  can  give  the 
increase.  It  is  altogether  as  a  divinely  instituted  ordinance 
that  we  uphold  the  might  of  preaching,  and  contend  that  it 
may  have  such  power  of  annihilating  time,  and  reducing 
the  past  to  present  being,  as  to  set  Christ  evidently  before  your 
eyes,  crucified  among  you.  We  are  assured,  in  regard  of 
the  public  ministrations  of  the  word,  that  they  are  the  insti- 
tuted method  by  which  the  events  of  one  age  are  to  be  kept 
fresh  through  every  other.     And.  on  this  account,  we  can 


DISOBEDIENCE    TO    THE    GOSPEL.  343 

have  no  hesitation  in  using  language  with  regard  to  these 
our  weekly  assemblings,  which  would  be  wholly  unwarran- 
ted, if  we  ascribed  the  worth  of  preaching,  in  any  degree,  to 
the  preacher.  When  the  services  of  God's  house  are  con- 
sidered as  an  instrumentality  through  which  God's  Spirit 
operates,  we  may  safely  attribute  to  those  services  extraordi- 
nary energy. 

We  say  therefore  of  preaching,  that  it  must  be  separated 
as  far  as  possible  from  the  preacher  ;  for  it  is  only  when  thus 
separated,  that  we  can  apply  to  it  St.  Paul's  assertion  in  our 
text.  I  might  now  bring  before  you  a  summary  of  the  his- 
tory of  Christ.  I  might  evoke  from  the  past  the  miracles  of 
Jesus,  and  bid  you  look  on,  as  the  sick  are  healed,  and  the 
dead  raised.  I  might  lead  you  from  scene  to  scene  of  his  last 
great  struggle  with  the  powers  of  darkness,  and  summon  you 
to  behold  him  in  the  garden,  and  at  the  judgment-seat,  on 
the  cross  and  in  the  grave.  And  then,  as  though  we  were 
actually  standing,  as  stood  the  Israelites,  when  the  fiery  ser- 
pents were  abroad,  round  the  cross  which  sustained  that  to 
which  we  must  look  for  deliverance,  might  I  entreat  you,  by 
the  hopes  and  fears  which  centre  in  eternity,  to  gaze  on  the 
Lamb  of  God  as  the  alone  propitiation  for  sin.  This  I  might 
do  :  and  this  has  been  often  done  from  this  place.  And  shall 
we  hesitate  to  affirm,  that,  whensoever  this  is  done,  Jesus 
Christ  is  "set  forth,  crucified  among  you?"  It  is  not  that  we 
can  pretend  to  throw  surpassing  vividness  into  our  represen- 
tations. It  is  not  that  we  can  claim  such  power  of  delinea- 
tion as  shall  renovate  the  past,  and  cause  it  to  re-appear  as  a 
present  occurrence.  It  is  not,  that,  by  any  figure  of  speech, 
or  any  hold  on  your  imaginations,  we  can  summon  back 
what  has  long  ago  departed,  and  fix  it  in  the  midst  of  you 
visibly  and  palpably.  It  is  only,  that  as  intercession  has 
been  appointed  to  perpetuate  the  crucifixion  of  Christ — so 
that,  as  our  Advocate  with  the  Father,  he  has  continually  that 
sacrifice  to  present,  which  he  offered  once  for  all  upon  Cal- 
vary— so  has  preaching  been  appointed  to  preserve  the  memo- 
ry of  that  death  which  achieved  our  redemption,  and  keep 
the  mighty  deed  from  growing  old. 


344  THE    UNNATORALNESS    of 

The  virtue  therefore  which  we  ascribe  to  our  public  dis- 
courses, is  derived  exclusively  from  their  constituting  an  or- 
dained instrumentality;  and  our  confidence  that  the  virtue 
will  not  be  found  wanting,  flows  only  from  a  conviction  that 
an  instrumentality,  once  ordained,  will  be  duly  honored,  by 
God.  We  believe  assuredly  that  there  is  at  work,  in  this 
very  place,  and  at  this  very  moment,  an  agency  independent 
of  all  human,  but  which  is  accustomed  to  make  itself  felt 
through  finite  and  weak  instruments.  As  the  words  flow 
from  the  lips  of  him  who  addresses  you,  flow  apparently  in 
the  unaided  strength  of  mere  earthly  speech,  they  may  be 
endowed  by  this  agency  with  an  energy  which  is  wholly 
from  above,  and  thus  prevail  to  the  setting  Christianity  be- 
fore you,  with  as  clear  evidence  as  was  granted  to  those  who 
saw  Jesus  in  the  flesh.  So  that,  if  there  were  nothing  en- 
trusted to  us  but  the  preaching  of  the  word,  if  we  had  no 
sacraments  to  administer,  we  should  feel,  that,  without  pre- 
sumption, we  might  declare  of  our  hearers  what  St.  Paul  de- 
clared of  the  christians  at  Galatia.  Yea,  so  deep  is  our  per- 
suasion of  our  living  under  the  dispensation  of  the  Spirit,  and 
of  preaching  being  the  chief  engine  which  this  Spirit  employs 
in  transmitting  a  knowledge  of  redemption,  that,  after  every 
endeavor,  however  feeble  and  inadequate  to  bring  under 
men's  view  "  the  mystery  of  godliness,"  we  feel  that  practi- 
cally as  much  is  done  for  them  as  though  they  had  been 
spectators  of  Christ's  expiatory  sufferings ;  and  therefore 
could  we  boldly  wind  up  every  such  endeavor,  by  addressing 
our  auditors  as  individuals,  "before  whose  eyes  Jesus  Christ 
hath  been  evidently  set  forth,  crucified  among  them." 

But  you  are  to  add  to  this,  that  not  only  is  there  the  preach- 
ing of  the  Gospel  in  our  churches;  there  is  also  the  admin- 
istration of  sacraments.  We  will  confine  ourselves  to  the 
sacrament  of  the  Lord's  supper,  as  furnishing  the  more  for- 
cible illustration.  It  is  said  by  St.  Paul,  in  reference  to  this 
sacrament,  "  As  often  as  ye  eat  this  bread,  and  drink  this 
cup,  ye  do  show  the  Lord's  death  till  he  come" — an  explicit 
assertion  that  there  is  in  the  Lord's  supper,  such  a  manifesta- 
tion of  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus,  as  will  serve  to  set  forth  that 


DISOBEDIENCE    TO    THE    GOSPEL.  345 

event  until  his  second  appearing.  And  we  scarcely  need 
tell  you,  that,  inasmuch  as  the  bread  and  the  wine  represent 
the  body  and  blood  of  the  Savior,  the  administration  of  this 
sacrament  is  so  commemorative  of  Christ's  having  been  of- 
fered as  a  sacrifice,  that  we  seem  to  have  before  us  the  aw- 
ful and  mysterious  transaction,  as  though  again  were  the 
cross  reared,  and  the  words  "  It  is  finished  "  pronounced  in 
our  hearing.  We  have  here  the  representation  by  significa- 
tive action,  just  as,  in  the  case  of  preaching,  by  authoritative 
announcement.  For  no  man  can  partake  of  this  sacrament, 
with  his  spiritual  sensibilities  in  free  exercise,  and  not  seem 
to  himself  to  be  traversing  the  garden  and  the  mount,  conse- 
crated by  a  Mediator's  agony,  whilst  they  witness  the  fearful 
struggles  through  which  was  effected  our  reconciliation 
to  God. 

And  if  we  attach  weight  to  the  opinion  of  the  church  in 
her  best  days,  we  must  hold  that  there  is  actually  a  sacrifice 
in  the  Eucharist,  though  of  course  not  such  as  the  papists 
pretend.  Christ  is  offered  in  this  sacrament,  but  only  com- 
memoratively.  Yet  the  commemoration  is  not  a  bare  re- 
membering, or  putting  ourselves  in  mind  ;  it  is  strictly  a 
commemoration  made  to  God  the  Father.  As  Christ,  by 
presenting  his  death  and  satisfaction  to  his  Father,  continu- 
ally intercedes  for  us  in  heaven,  so  the  church  on  earth, 
when  celebrating  the  Eucharist,  approaches  the  throne  of 
grace  by  representing  Christ  unto  his  Father  in  the  holy 
mysteries  of  his  death  and  passion.* 

From  the  beginning  it  has  been  always  the  same  awfully 
solemn  rite,  which  might  have  attested  and  taught  Christian- 
ity, had  every  written  record  perished  from  the  earth.  All 
along  it  has  been  the  Gospel  preached  by  action,  a  pheno- 
menon of  which  you  could  give  no  account,  except  by  ad- 
mitting the  chief  facts  of  the  New  Testament  history,  and 
which  might,  in  a  great  degree,  have  preserved  a  knowledge 
of  those  facts,  had  they  never  been  registered  by  Evangel- 
ists.    It  is  like  a  pillar  erected  in  the  waste  of  centuries,  in- 

*  See  Mede  on  Malachi,  1:11. 
44 


346  THE     UNNATURALNESS    OF 

delibly  inscribed  with  memorials  of  our  faith  ;  or  rather,  it  is 
as  the  cross  itself,  presenting  to  all  ages  the  immolation  of 
that  victim  who  "  put  away  sin  by  the  sacrifice  of  himself." 
And  so  long  as  this  sacrament  is  administered  in  our 
churches,  men  shall  never  be  able  to  plead  that  there  are 
presented  to  them  none  but  weak  and  ineffective  exhibitions 
of  Christ.  If  the  crucifixion  be  not  vivid,  as  delineated  from 
the  pulpit,  it  must  be  vivid  as  delineated  from  the  altar.  And 
it  is  nothing  that  hundreds  absent  themselves  from  the 
great  celebration,  and  thus  never  witness  the  representation 
of  the  crucifixion.  They  are  invited  to  that  celebration, 
they  are  perfectly  aware  of  its  nature,  and  their  remaining 
away  can  do  nothing  towards  lessening  its  solemnities,  and 
stripping  it  of  energy  as  an  exhibition  of  Christ's  death.  And 
whilst  men  are  members  of  a  church  in  whose  ordinances 
the  Lord's  death  is  continually  shown  forth,  we  can  be  bold 
to  address  them,  whether  they  neglect  or  whether  they  par- 
take of  those  ordinances,  in  the  very  terms  in  which  St, 
Paul  addressed  the  Galatians  of  old.  Yes.  whatever  our  in- 
firmities and  deficiencies  as  preachers  of  the  everlasting 
Gospel,  we  take  high  ground  as  intrusted  with  dispensing 
the  sacrament  of  the  Eucharist:  and  whilst  we  have  to  deli- 
ver the  bread  of  which  Christ  said,  "  Take,  eat,  this  is  my 
body,"  and  the  cup  of  which  he  declared.  ';  this  is  my  blood 
of  the  New  Testament,"  we  may  look  an  assembly  confident- 
ly in  the  face,  and  affirm  that  there  are  proffered  them  such 
exhibitions  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  Mediator,  that  Jesus  Christ 
is  evidently  set  forth  before  their  eyes,  crucified  among  them. 
But  we  have  now,  in  the  second  place,  to  assume  that  the 
facts  of  the  Gospel  are  thus  brought  vividly  before  you,  and 
to  infer  from  it  that  disobedience  to  the  truth  can  only  be 
ascribed  to  fascination  or  witchcraft.  The  question,  "  Who 
hath  bewitched  you  ?"  indicates  the  persuasion  of  the  apostle, 
that  the  Gospel  of  the  crucifixion  was  eminently  adapted  to 
make  way  upon  earth.  And  this  is  a  point  which  perhaps 
scarcely  receives  its  due  share  of  attention.  We  know  so 
well  that  there  is  practically  a  kind  of  antipathy  between  the 
doctrines  of  Christianity  and  the  human  heart,  that,  whilst 


DISOBEDIENCE    TO    THE    COSPEL.  347 

we  admit  the  necessity  of  a  supernatural  influence  to  procure 
them  reception,  we  never  think  of  referring  to  sorcery  to  ex- 
plain their  rejection.  It  seems  so  natural  to  us  to  disobey 
the  truth,  however  clearly  and  forcibly  propounded,  that, 
when  disobedience  is  to  be  accounted  for,  there  appears  no 
need  for  the  calling  in  witchcraft. 

Yet  there  is,  we  believe,  a  mistake  in  this,  and  one  calcu- 
lated to  bring  discredit  on  the  Gospel.  If  you  represent  it  as 
a  thing  quite  to  be  expected,  that  men  would  disobey  the 
Gospel — just  as  though  the  Gospel  were  so  constructed  as  to 
be  necessarily  repulsive — you  invest  it  with  a  character  at 
variance  with  the  wisdom  of  its  Author  ;  for  you  declare  of 
the  means,  that  they  are  not  adapted  to  the  end  which  is  pro- 
posed. And  we  wish  to  maintain,  that,  situated  as  fallen  men 
are,  the  Gospel  of  the  crucifixion  adapts  itself  so  accurately 
to  their  wants,  and  addresses  itself  so  powerfully  to  their 
feelings,  that  their  rejection  of  it  is  a  mystery,  in  the  ex- 
plaining of  which  we  are  forced  to  have  recourse  to  the 
witch's  fascinations.  We  reckon  that  the  great  truth  of  Chris- 
tianity, "  God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his  only  be- 
gotten Son  "  for  its  rescue,  is  so  fitted  for  overcoming  the  ob- 
stinacy, and  melting  the  hearts  of  humankind,  that  it  must 
be  matter  of  amazement  to  higher  orders  of  intelligence,  that 
it  should  be  heard  with  indifference,  or  rejected  with  scorn. 
Angels,  pondering  a  fact  which  appears  to  them  more  sur- 
prizing than  the  humiliation  and  death  of  the  everlasting 
Word — the  fact  that  redeemed  creatures  reject  their  Re- 
deemer— may  propose  amongst  themselves  the  very  question 
of  our  text,  "  who  hath  bewitched  them  that  they  should  not 
obey  the  truth  ?" 

We  shall  not  include  in  our  investigations  into  the  fairness 
of  this  question  the  case  of  the  open  infidel,  who  professedly 
disbelieves  the  whole  of  Christianity.  We  omit  this  case,  not 
because  we  think  that  it  is  not  to  be  accounted  for  as  the 
result  of  some  species  of  fascination,  but  only  because  it  is 
not  one  of  those  directly  intended  by  St.  Paul.  As  to  the  fas- 
cination or  witchcraft,  it  scarce  admits  debate.  For  we  can 
never  allow,  that,  where  reason  has  fair  play,  and  the  intel- 


348  THE    UNNATURALNESS    OF 

lect  is  permitted  to  sit  in  calm  judgment  on  the  proofs  to 
which  Christianity  appeals,  there  will  be  aught  else  but  a 
verdict  in  favor  of  the  divine  origin  of  our  religion.  So 
mighty  are  the  evidences  on  which  the  faith  rests,  that,  where 
there  is  candor  in  the  inquirer,  belief  must  be  the  issue  of 
the  inquiry.  And  wheresoever  there  is  a  different  result,  we 
can  be  certain  that  there  has  been  some  fatal  bias  on  the  rea- 
soning faculties  ;  and  that,  whether  it  have  been  the  sorcery 
of  his  own  passions,  or  of  "  the  prince  of  the  power  of  the 
air,"  the  man  has  been  as  verily  spell-bound  throughout  his 
investigations,  as  though,  with  Saul,  he  had  gone  down  to 
the  cave  of  the  enchantress,  and  yielded  himself  to  her  un- 
hallowed dominion. 

But  we  pass  by  this  case,  and  come  at  once  to  the  consi- 
dering, whether  the  Gospel  of  Christ  be  not  admirably  cal- 
culated for  making  way  to  the  conscience  and  the  heart,  so 
that  the  marvel  is  not  that  it  should  here  and  there  win  a 
convert,  but  rather  that  it  does  not  meet  with  universal 
success. 

Let  it,  first,  be  observed  with  how  surpassing  an  energy 
this  Gospel  appeals  to  the  fears  of  mankind.  We  say,  to  the 
fears — for  it  were  indeed  to  take  a  contracted  view  of  Chris- 
tianity, to  survey  it  as  proffering  mercy,  and  to  overlook  its 
demonstrations  of  wrath.  If  Jesus  Christ  have  been  "  evi- 
dently set  forth,  crucified  among  you,"  there  has  been  ex- 
hibited to  you  so  stern  a  manifestation  of  God's  hatred  of 
sin,  that,  if  you  can  still  live  in  violation  of  his  laws,  some 
fascinating  power  must  have  made  you  reckless  of  conse- 
quences. There  is  this  marvellous  combination  in  the  Gos- 
pel scheme,  that  we  cannot  preach  of  pardon  without  preach- 
ing of  judgment.  Every  homily  as  to  how  sinners  may  be 
forgiven,  is  equally  a  homily  as  to  the  fearfulness  of  their 
doom,  if  they  continue  impenitent.  We  speak  to  men  of 
Christ  as  bearing  their  "  sins  in  his  own  body  on  the  tree," 
and  the  speech  seems  to  breathe  nothing  but  unmeasured 
loving-kindness.  Yet  who,  on  hearing  it,  can  repress  the 
thoughts,  what  must  sin  be,  if  no  finite  being  could  make 
atonement;  what  must  its  curse  be,  if  Deity  alone  could  ex- 


DISOBEDIENCE    TO    THE    GOSPEL.  349 

haust  it  ?  And  yet,  with  the  great  mass  of  men,  this  appeal 
to  their  fears  is  wholly  ineffectual.  Is  it  that  the  appeal  is 
not  sufficiently  energetic  ?  is  it  that  it  is  not  framed  into  such 
shape  as  to  he  adapted  to  beings  with  the  passions  and  feel- 
ings of  men  ?  Is  it  that  there  is  nothing  in  our  nature,  which 
responds  to  a  warning  and  summons  thus  constructed  and 
conveyed  ?  We  cannot  admit  the  explanation.  The  cruci- 
fixion is  a  proclamation,  than  which  there  cannot  be  imagin- 
ed a  clearer  and  more  thrilling,  that  an  eternity  of  inconceiva- 
ble wretchedness  will  be  awarded  to  all  who  continue  in  sin. 
And  yet  men  do  continue  in  sin.  The  proclamation  is  prac- 
tically as  powerless  as  though  it  were  the  threat  of  an  infant 
or  an  idiot.  And  we  are  bold  to  say  of  this,  that  it  is  unnatu- 
ral. Men  have  the  flesh  which  can  quiver,  and  the  hearts 
which  can  quake  ;  and  we  call  it  unnatural,  that  there 
should  be  no  trembling,  and  no  misgiving,  when  the  wrath 
of  the  Almighty  is  being  opened  before  them,  and  directed 
against  them. 

And  if  unnatural,  what  account  can  we  give  of  their  dis- 
obeying the  truth?  Oh,  there  have  been  brought  to  bear  on 
them  the  arts  of  fascination  and  sorcery.  I  know  not,  in 
each  particular  case,  what  hath  woven  the  spell,  and  breath- 
ed the  incantation.  But  there  must  have  been  some  species 
of  moral  witchcraft,  by  which  they  have  been  steeled  against 
impressions  which  would  otherwise  have  been  necessarily 
produced.  Has  the  magician  been  with  them,  who  presides 
over  the  gold  and  silver,  and  persuaded  them  that  wealth  is 
so  precious  that  it  should  be  amassed  at  all  risks?  Has  the 
enchantress  who  mingles  the  wine-cup,  and  wreathes  the 
dance,  been  with  them,  beguiling  them  with  the  music  of 
her  blandishments,  and  assuring  them  that  the  pleasures  of 
the  world  are  worth  every  penalty  they  incur?  Has  the 
wizard,  who,  by  the  circlings  of  his  wand,  can  cause  the  glo- 
ries of  empire  to  pass  before  men's  view,  as  they  passed,  in 
mysterious  but  magnificent  phantoms,  before  that  of  Christ 
in  his  hour  of  temptation,  been  with  them,  cajoling  them  with 
dreams  of  honor  and  distinction,  till  he  have  made  them  reck- 
less of  everlasting  infamy?  We  say  again,  we  know  not  what 


3.50  THE     UNNATVRALNESS    OF 

the  enchantment  may  have  been.  We  know  not  the  draught 
by  whose  fumes  men  have  been  stnpified,  nor  the  voice  by 
whose  tones  they  have  been  infatuated.  But  we  know  so 
thoroughly  that  the  Gospel,  published  in  their  hearing,  is 
exactly  adapted  for  the  acting  on  their  fears,  for  the  filling 
them  with  dread,  and  moving  them  to  energy,  that,  when  we 
behold  them  indifferent  to  the  high  things  of  futurity,  and 
yet  remember  that  ';  Christ  Jesus  hath  been  evidently  set 
forth,  crucified  among  them,"  we  can  but  resolve  the  phe- 
nomenon into  some  species  or  another  of  magical  delusion  ; 
we  can  but  ply  them  with  the  question,  "  who  hath  bewitch- 
ed you,  that  ye  should  not  obey  the  truth  ?" 

But  it  is  saying  little,  to  say  that  the  Gospel  addresses  it- 
self to  the  fears  of  mankind  ;  it  is  equally  adapted  for  acting 
on  feelings  of  a  gentler  and  more  generous  description.  The 
effect  of  the  fall  was  not  to  banish  from  man's  breast  "  what- 
soever things  are  lovely  and  of  good  report ;"  but  rather — 
and  this  is  far  more  melancholy,  as  proving  alienation  from 
God — that,  whilst  there  can  yet  be  the  play  of  fine  and  noble 
emotions  between  man  and  man,  there  is  nothing  of  the  kind 
from  man  towards  his  Maker. 

Those  sympathies,  which  are  readily  called  into  exercise 
by  the  kindness  and  disinterestedness  of  a  fellow  creature, 
seem  incapable  of  responding  to  the  love  and  compassion  of 
our  benevolent  Creator.  That  statue,  so  famed  in  antiquity, 
which  breathed  melody  only  when  gilded  by  the  sunbeams, 
was  just  the  opposite  to  man  in  his  exile  and  alienation.  No 
lesser  rays,  whether  from  the  moon  or  stars,  could  wake  the 
music  that  was  sepulchred  in  a  stone.  The  sun  must  come 
forth,  "  as  a  giant  to  run  his  race,"  and  then  the  statue  re- 
sponded to  his  shillings,  and  hymned  his  praises.  But  not 
so  with  man.  The  lesser  rays  can  wake  some  melody.  The 
claims  of  country,  or  of  kindred,  can  excite  him  to  corres- 
pondent duties.  But  the  sun  shineth  upon  him  in  vain.  The 
claims  of  God  call  forth  no  devotedness  :  and  the  stone  which 
can  discourse  musically  in  answer  to  the  glimmerings  of 
philosophy,  and  the  glow  of  friendship,  is  silent  as  the  grave 
to  the  revelation  of  God  and  his  Christ. 


DISOBEDIENCE    TO    THE    GOSPEL.  351 

We  declare  of  the  Gospel,  that  it  addresses  itseli'  directly 
to  those  feelings,  which,  for  the  most  part,  are  instantly  wa- 
kened by  kindness  and  beneficence.  Takeaway  the  divinity 
from  this  Gospel,  reduce  it  into  a  record  of  what  one  man 
hath  done  for  others,  and  it  relates  a  generous  interposition, 
whose  objects,  if  they  evinced  no  gratitude,  would  be  de- 
nounced as  disgracing  humanity.  If  it  be  true  that  we  natu- 
rally entertain  sentiments  of  the  warmest  affection  towards 
those  who  have  done,  or  suffered,  some  great  thing  on  our 
behalf,  it  would  seem  quite  to  be  expected  that  such  senti- 
ments would  be  called  into  most  vigorous  exercise  by  the 
Mediator's  work.  If  in  a  day  when  pestilence  was  abroad  on 
the  earth,  and  men  dreaded  its  .entrance  into  their  house- 
holds, we  could  carry  them  to  a  bed  on  which  lay  one  rack- 
ed by  the  terrible  malady  ;  and  tell  them  that  this  individual 
had  voluntarily  taken  the  tearful  infection,  and  was  going 
down  in  agony  to  the  grave,  because  complying,  of  his  own 
choice,  with  a  mysterious  decree  which  assured  him,  that,  if 
he  would  thus  sutler,  the  disease  should  have  no  power  over 
their  families — -is  it  credible  that  they  would  look  on  the 
dying  man  with  indifference ;  or  that,  as  they  hearkened  to 
his  last  requests,  they  would  feel  other  than  a  resolve  to  un- 
dertake, as  the  most  sacred  of  duties,  the  fulfilling  the  in- 
junctions of  one  who,  by  so  costly  a  sacrifice,  warded  off  the 
evil  with  which  they  were  threatened  ?  And  yet.  what  would 
this  be,  compared  with  our  leading  them  to  the  scene  of  cru- 
cifixion, and  showing  them  the  Redeemer  dying  in  their 
stead  ?  You  cannot  say,  that,  if  the  sufferer  on  his  death-bed 
would  be  a  spectacle  to  excite  emotions  of  gratitude,  and  re- 
solutions of  obedience,  the  spectacle  of  Christ  on  the  cross 
might  be  expected  to  be  surveyed  with  carelessness  and 
coldness.  Yet  such  is  undeniably  the  fact.  The  result  which 
would  naturally  be  produced  is  not  produced.  Men  would 
naturally  feel  gratitude,  but  they  do  not  feel  gratitude.  They 
would  naturally  be  softened  into  love  and  submission,  and 
they  manifest  only  insensibility  and  hard-heartedness. 

And  what  are  we  to  say  to  this?  Here  are  beings  who  are 
capable  of  certain  feelings,  and  who  show  nothing  of  those 


352  THE    UNNATURALNESS    OF 

feelings  when  there  is  most  to  excite  them;  beings  who  can 
display  love  to  every  friend  bnt  their  best,  and  gratitude  to 
every  benefactor  bnt  their  greatest.  Oh,  we  say — and  it  is 
the  unnatnralness  of  the  exhibition  which  forces  ns  to  say — 
that  enchantment  has  been  at  work,  stealing  away  the  senses, 
and  deadening  the  feelings.  In  all  other  cases  the  heart  has 
free  play ;  bnt  hi  this  it  is  trammelled,  as  by  some  magical 
cords,  and  cannot  beat  generously.  Satan,  the  great  deceiver, 
who  seduced  the  first  of  humankind,  has  been  busy  with 
one  sort  or  another  of  illusion,  and  has  so  bound  men  with 
his  spells  that  they  are  morally  entranced.  We  know  not,  as 
we  said  in  the  former  case,  what  may  have  been  the  stupi- 
fying  charm,  or  the  coercive  incantation.  We  have  not  gone 
down  with  them  to  the  haunts  of  the  sorcerer,  that  we  might 
know  by  what  rites  they  have  thus  been  unhumanized.  But 
they  would  never  be  indifferent  where  there  is  most  to  ex- 
cite, and  insensible  where  there  is  all  that  can  tell  upon  their 
feelings,  if  they  had  not  surrendered  the  soul  to  some  power 
of  darkness,  some  beguiling  and  o'ermastering  passion,  some 
agency  which,  like  that  pretended  to  by  the  woman  of  En- 
dor,  professes  to  give  life  to  the  dead.  And  therefore  remem- 
bering, that,  as  grafted  into  the  Christian  Church,  they  are 
men  "  before  whose  eyes  Jesus  Christ  hath  been  evidently 
set  forth,  crucified  among  them,"  we  cannot  see  them  mani- 
festing no  love  to  the  Savior,  and  yielding  him  no  allegiance, 
without  feeling  that  this  their  vehement  ingratitude  is  wholly 
unnatural,  and  without  therefore  pressing  home  upon  them 
the  question,  "  who  hath  bewitched  you  that  ye  should  not 
obey  the  truth  ?" 

We  may  certainly  add,  that,  as  addressing  itself  to  men's 
hope,  the  Gospel  is  so  calculated  for  making  and  retaining 
disciples,  that  nothing  but  the  workings  of  sorcery  will  ex- 
plain its  rejection.  It  must  be  remembered  that  Christ,  as 
Mediator,  not  only  gained  our  pardon,  but  procured  for  us 
everlasting  happiness.  And  if  we  must  judge  the  immense- 
ness  of  the  escaped  punishment,  we  must  judge  also  that  of 
the  proffered  glory,  by  the  fact  that  our  substitute  was  none 
other  than  a  person  of  the  Trinity.     If  Christ  Jesus  is  set 


DISOBEDIENCE    TO    THE    GOSPEL.  353 

before  men,  crucified  among  them,  they  are  manifestly  taught, 
that,  as  the  price  paid  is  not  to  be  computed,  neither  is  the 
happiness  of  which  it  was  the  purchase.  And  they  are  beings 
keenly  alive  to  their  own  interests,  readily  excited  by  any 
prospect  of  good,  and  who  exhibit  the  greatest  alacrity  and 
vigor  in  pursuing  such  plans  as  promise  them  advantage. 
It  is  moreover  their  natural  constitution,  to  forego  a  present 
for  a  future  and  far  greater  good,  and  to  submit  cheerfully  to 
privations,  in  hopes  of  receiving  what  shall  be  more  thau 
equivalent.  We  call  this  their  natural  constitution  ;  and  we 
therefore,  further,  call  it  unnatural,  and  demonstrative  of 
strange  and  sinister  influence,  that  they  should  choose  the 
trifling  in  preference  to  the  unmeasured,  and  give  up  the 
everlasting  for  the  sake  of  the  transient.  Yet  this  men  do 
when  they  disobey  the  Gospel.  The  Gospel  addresses  it- 
self directly  to  their  desire  after  happiness.  It  makes  its 
appeal  to  that  principle  in  their  nature,  which  prompts  them 
to  provide  for  the  future  at  the  expense  of  the  present.  In 
every  other  case  they  hearken  to  such  address,  and  respond 
to  such  appeal.  But  in  this  case,  which  differs  from  every 
other  only  in  the  incalculable  superiority  of  the  proffered 
good,  they  turn  a  deaf  ear,  and  wear  all  the  appearance  of  a 
natural  incapacity  of  being  stirred  by  such  an  engine  as  the 
Gospel  brings  to  bear. 

What  account  shall  we  give  of  this  ?  A  principle  of  their 
nature  is  in  full  vigor,  except  in  the  instance  in  which  there 
is  most  to  excite  it,  and  then  it  seems  utterly  extinguished. 
They  can  pursue  a  future  good,  unless  it  be  infinite,  and  be 
moved  by  any  prospect  of  happiness,  except  of  everlasting. 
There  must  have  been  sorcery  here  ;  and  we  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  determining  how  the  magician  has  worked.  The 
devil  has  practised  that  jugglery  which  causes  the  objects  of 
faith  to  shrink  into  insignificance,  and  those  of  sense  to  dilate 
into  magnitude.  There  has  been  the  weaving  of  that  spell 
which  circumscribes  the  view,  so  that,  though  a  man  can 
look  forward,  he  never  looks  beyond  the  grave.  There  has 
been  the  drinking  of  that  cup  of  voluptuousness,  of  which 
whosoever  partakes  is  maddened  into  longing  for  yet  deeper 
45 


354  THE    UNNATURAI.NESS    OF 

draughts.  It  is  sorcery,  it  is  witchcraft.  Men  would  not 
hesitate,  if  an  earthly  good  were  to  be  secured  on  the  condi- 
tions of  the  Gospel ;  and  they  refuse,  when  the  good  is  hea- 
venly, only  because  they  have  suffered  themselves  to  be  be- 
guiled, and  cheated,  and  entranced.  There  is  a  charm  up- 
on them,  and  their  own  passions  have  sealed  it,  binding 
them  to  love  the  world,  and  the  things  that  are  in  the  world. 
There  is  an  enchanted  circle,  which  their  indulged  lusts 
have  traced,  and  within  which  they  walk,  so  that  they  can- 
not expatiate  over  the  vast  spreadings  of  their  existence. 
There  is  a  syren  voice,  and  their  own  wishes  syllable  it* 
whispers,  telling  them  there  is  no  cause  for  haste,  but  that 
hereafter  it  will  be  soon  enough  to  attend  to  eternity.  And 
thus  there  is  no  defect  in  the  Gospel.  It  is  adapted,  with  the 
nicest  precision,  to  creatures  so  constituted  as  ourselves. 
But  we  live  in  the  midst  of  gorgeous  deceits,  and  brilliant 
meteors.  The  wizard's  skill,  and  the  necromancer's  art. 
are  busied  with  hiding  from  us  what  we  most  need  to  know  ; 
and  our  eyes  are  dazzled  by  the  splendid  apparitions  with 
which  the  god  of  this  world  peoples  his  domain ;  and  our 
ears  are  fascinated  by  the  melodies  in  which  pleasure 
breathes  her  incantations ;  and  thus  it  comes  to  pass,  that 
we  are  verily  "  bewitched"  into  disobeying  the  truth. 

Would  to  God  that  we  might  all  strive  to  break  away  from 
the  seductions  and  flatteries  of  earth,  and  give  ourselves  in 
good  earnest  to  the  seeking  happiness  in  heaven.  And  what 
is  it  that  we  ask  of  men,  when  we  entreat  them  to  escape 
from  the  magician,  and  live  for  eternity?  Is  it  that  they 
should  be  less  intellectual,  less  philosophical  7  On  the  con- 
trary, religion  is  the  nurse  of  intellect,  and  philosophy  is 
most  noble  when  doing  homage  to  revelation.  It  is  not  in- 
tellectual to  live  only  for  this  world,  it  is  not  philosophical 
to  remain  ignorant  of  God.  Is  it  that  they  should  surrender 
their  pleasures,  and  walk  a  round  of  unvaried  mortification  ? 
We  ask  them  to  surrender  nothing  which  a  rational  being 
can  approve,  or  an  immortal  vindicate.  We  leave  them 
every  pleasure  which  can  be  enjoyed  without  a  blush,  and 
remembered  without  remorse.    We  ask  only  that  they  would 


DISOBEDIENCE    TO    THE    GOSPEL.  355 

i\ee  those  vices  whose  end  is  death,  cultivate  those  virtues 
which  are  as  much  the  happiness  as  the  ornament  of  man, 
and  propose  to  themselves  an  object  commensurate  with  their 
capacities.  This,  let  them  be  assured,  is  practical  Christiani- 
ty— to  shun  what,  even  as  men,  they  should  avoid,  and  pur- 
sue what,  even  as  men,  they  should  desire. 

Shall  we  not  then  beseech  the  Almighty,  that  we  may 
have  strength  to  break  the  spell,  and  dissolve  the  illusion  ? 
The  Philistines  are  upon  us,  as  upon  Sampson,  and  we  are 
yet,  it  may  be,  in  the  lap  of  the  enchantress.  But  all 
strength  is  not  gone.  The  Spirit  of  the  living  God  may  yet 
be  entreated ;  and  the  razor  of  divine  judgment  hath  not 
swept  off  the  seven  locks  wherein  our  might  lies.  And 
therefore,  however  bewitched,  each  amongst  us  may  yet 
struggle  with  the  sorcerer  who  has  bound  him  ;  and  we  can 
assure  him  that  there  is  such  efficacy  in  hearty  prayer  to 
the  Lord,  that,  if  he  cry  for  deliverance,  the  green  withes 
shall  be  "  as  tow  when  it  toucheth  the  fire,"  and  the  new 
cords  be  broken  like  a  thread  from  his  arms. 


SERMON    II. 


SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT, 


"  But  none  saith,  Where  is  God  my  Maker,  who  giveth  songs  in  the  night  V 
Job,  35  :  10. 


In  regard  of  the  concerns  and  occurrences  of  life,  some 
men  are  always  disposed  to  look  at  the  bright  side,  and 
others  at  the  dark.  The  tempers  and  feelings  of  some  are 
so  cheerful  and  elastic,  that  it  is  hardly  within  the  power  of 
ordinary  circumstances  to  depress  and  overbear  them  ;  whilst 
others,  on  the  contrary,  are  of  so  gloomy  a  temperament, 
that  the  least  of  what  is  adverse  serves  to  confound  them. 
But  if  we  can  divide  men  into  these  classes,  when  reference 
is  had  simply  to  their  private  affairs,  we  doubt  whether  the 
same  division  will  hold,  we  are  sure  it  will  not  in  the  same 
proportion,  when  the  reference  is  generally  to  God's  dealings 
with  our  race.  In  regard  of  these  dealings,  there  is  an  al- 
most universal  disposition  to  the  looking  on  the  dark  side, 
and  not  on  the  bright ;  as  though  there  were  cause  for  no- 
thing but  wonder,  that  a  God  of  infinite  love  should  permit 
so  much  misery  in  any  section  of  his  intelligent  creation. 
You  find  but  few  who  are  ready  to  observe  what  provision 
has  been  made  for  human  happiness,  and  what  capacities 
there  are  yet  in  the  world,  notwithstanding  its  vast  disorga- 


SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT.  357 

nization,  of  ministering  to  the  satisfaction  of  such  as  prefer 
righteousness  to  wickedness. 

Now  we  cannot  deny,  that  if  we  merely  regard  the  earth 
as  it  is,  the  exhibition  is  one  whose  darkness  it  is  scarcely 
possible  to  overcharge.  But  when  you  seek  to  gather  from 
the  condition  of  the  world  the  character  of  its  Governor,  you 
are  bound  to  consider,  not  what  the  world  is,  but  what  it 
would  be,  if  all,  which  that  Governor  hath  done  on  its  be- 
half, were  allowed  to  produce  its  legitimate  effect.  And  we 
are  sure,  that,  when  you  set  yourselves  to  compute  the 
amount  of  what  may  be  called  unavoidable  misery — that 
misery  which  must  equally  remain,  if  Christianity  possessed 
unlimited  sway — you  would  find  no  cause  for  wonder,  that 
God  has  left  the  earth  burdened  with  so  great  a  weight  of 
sorrow,  but  only  of  praise,  that  he  has  provided  so  amply  for 
the  happiness  of  the  fallen. 

The  greatest  portion  of  the  misery  which  is  so  pathetically 
bewailed,  exists  in  spite,  as  it  were,  of  God's  benevolent  ar- 
rangements, and  would  be  avoided,  if  men  were  not  bent  on 
choosing  the  evil,  and  rejecting  the  good.  And  even  the  un- 
avoidable misery  is  so  mitigated  by  the  provisions  of  Chris- 
tianity, that,  if  there  were  nothing  else  to  be  borne,  the  pres- 
sure would  not  be  heavier  than  just  sufficed  for  the  ends  of 
moral  discipline.  There  must  be  sorrow  on  the  earth,  so 
long  as  there  is  death  ;  but,  if  this  were  all,  the  certain  hope 
of  resurrection  and  immortality  would  dry  every  tear,  or 
cause,  at  least,  triumph  so  to  blend  with  lamentation,  that 
the  mourner  would  be  almost  lost  in  the  believer.  Thus  it 
is  true,  both  of  those  causes  of  unhappiness  which  would 
remain,  if  Christianity  were  universally  prevalent,  and  of 
those  for  whose  removal  this  religion  was  intended  and 
adapted,  that  they  offer  no  argument  against  the  compassions 
of  God.  The  attentive  observer  may  easily  satisfy  himself, 
that,  though  for  wise  ends  a  certain  portion  of  suffering  has 
been  made  unavoidable,  the  divine  dealings  with  man  are, 
in  the  largest  sense,  those  of  tenderness  and  love,  so  that,  if 
the  great  majority  of  our  race  were  not  determined  to  be 
wretched,  enough  has  been  done  to  insure  their  being  happy. 


358  SONGS     IN    THE    NIGHT. 

And  when  we  come  to  give  the  reasons  why  so  vast  an  ac- 
cumulation of  wretchedness  is  to  be  found  in  every  district 
of  the  globe,  we  cannot  assign  the  will  and  appointment  of 
God  :  we  charge  the  whole  on  man's  forgetfulness  of  God. 
on  his  contempt  or  neglect  of  remedies  and  assuagements 
divinely  provided  ;  yea,  we  offer  in  explanation  the  words  of 
our  text,  "  none  saith,  Where  is  God  my  Maker,  whogiveth 
songs  in  the  night  ?" 

We  shall  not  stay  to  trace  the  connection  between  these 
words  and  the  preceding,  but  rather  separate  at  once  the 
text  from  the  context.  We  may  then  consider  it  as  giving 
a  beautiful  character  of  God,  which  should  attract  men  to- 
wards him,  and  which  is  sufficient  pledge,  that,  if  it  did, 
they  would  be  happy  even  in  the  midst  of  adversity.  Or  we 
may  regard  the  words,  when  thus  taken  by  themselves,  as 
expressive  of  the  inexcusableness  of  men  in  neglecting  God, 
when  he  has  revealed  himself  under  a  character  the  most 
adapted  to  the  fixing  their  confidence.  It  is  evident  that 
Elihu  represents  it  as  a  most  strange  and  criminal  thing? 
that,  though  our  Maker  giveth  songs  in  the  night,  he  is  not 
inquired  after  by  those  on  whom  calamity  presses.  We  may, 
therefore,  divide  what  we  have  to  say  on  our  text  under  two 
general  heads  ;  considering,  in  the  first  place,  what  an  ag- 
gravation it  is  of  the  guilt  of  men's  forgetting  their  Creator, 
that  he  is  a  God  "  who  giveth  songs  in  the  night ;"  and 
showing  you,  in  the  second  place,  with  how  great  truth"  and 
fitness  this  touching  description  may  be  applied  to  our 
Maker. 

Now  we  must  all  be  conscious,  that,  if  pain  and  suffering 
were  removed  from  the  world,  a  great  portion  of  the  Bible 
would  become  quite  inapplicable  ;  for  on  almost  its  every 
page  there  are  sayings  which  would  seem  out  of  place,  if 
addressed  to  beings  inaccessible  to  grief.  And  it  is  one  beau- 
tiful instance  of  the  adaptation  of  revelation  to  our  circum- 
stances, that  the  main  thing  which  it  labors  to  set  forth  is  the 
love  of  our  Maker.  There  are  many  untouched  points  on 
which  curiosity  craves  information,  and  on  which  apostles 
and  prophets  might  have  been  commissioned  to  pour  a  tide 


SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT.  359 

of  illustration.  But  there  is  no  point  on  which  it  was  so  im- 
portant to  us  to  be  certified,  as  on  this  of  God's  love  towards 
us,  notwithstanding  our  alienation.  We  emphatically  needed 
a  revelation  to  assure  us  of  this  ;  for  natural  theology,  what- 
ever its  success  in  delineating  the  attributes  of  God,  could 
never  have  proved  that  sin  had  not  excluded  us  from  all 
share  in. his  favor. 

And  accordingly  it  is  at  this  that  the  Bible  labors ;  and 
thereby  it  becomes  most  truly  the  Bible  of  the  fallen.  A  re- 
velation of  God  to  a  rank  of  beings  untainted  by  sin,  would 
probably  not  be  much  occupied  with  affirming  and  exhibit- 
ing the  divine  love.  There  must  be  guilt,  and  therefore  some 
measure  of  consciousness  of  exposure  to  wrath,  ere  there  can 
be  doubt  as  to  whether  the  work  of  God's  hands  be  still  the 
object  of  his  favor.  The  Bible  therefore,  if  we  may  thus 
speak,  of  an  order  of  angels,  might  contain  nothing  but  gor- 
geous descriptions  of  divine  supremacy  and  magnificence, 
opening  the  mightiest  mysteries,  but  having  no  reference  to 
the  tenderness  of  a  Father,  which  was  always  experienced, 
and  none  to  the  forgiveness  of  sinners,  which  was  never  re- 
quired. But  such  a  Bible  would  be  as  much  out  of  place  on 
this  fallen  creation,  as  ours  in  a  sphere  where  all  was  purity 
and  light.  The  revelation,  which  alone  can  profit  us,  must 
be  a  revelation  of  mercy,  a  revelation  which  brings  God  be- 
fore us  as  not  made  irreconcilable  by  our  many  offences ;  a 
revelation,  in  short,  which  discloses  such  arrangements  for 
our  restoration  to  favor,  that  there  could  be  a  night  on  which 
cherubim  and  seraphim  lined  our  firmament,  chanting  the 
chorus,  "  peace  on  earth,  good-will  towards  man."  and  thus 
proving  of  our  Maker,  that  he  is  a  God  "  who  giveth  songs  in 
the  night." 

Now  you  all  know  that  this  is  the  character  of  the  reve- 
lation with  which  we  have  been  favored.  Independently  on 
the  great  fact  with  which  the  Bible  is  occupied,  the  fact  of 
our  redemption  through  the  suretyship  of  a  Mediator,  the 
inspired  writers  are  continually  affirming,  or  insisting  upon 
proofs,  that  the  Almighty  loves  the  human  race  with  a  love 
that  passeth  knowledge  ;  and  they  give  us,  in  his  name,  the 


360  SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT. 

most  animating  promises,  promises  whose  full  lustre  cannot 
be  discerned  in  the  sunshine,  but  only  when  the  sky  is  over- 
cast with  clouds.  We  must,  for  example,  be  ourselves  brought 
to  the  very  dust,  ere  we  can  rightly  estimate  this  exquisite 
description  of  a  being,  who  made  the  stars,  and  holdeth  the 
waters  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  "  God,  that  comforteth 
those  that  are  cast  down."  We  must  know  for  ourselves  the 
agony,  the  humiliation,  of  unforeseen  grief,  ere  we  can  taste 
the  sweetness  of  the  promise,  that  God,  he  who  hath  "  spread 
out  the  heavens  like  a  curtain,"  and  ordereth  the  motions  of 
all  the  systems  of  a  crowded  immensity,  "  shall  wipe  away 
tears  from  oft'  all  faces." 

But  if  God  have  thus  revealed  himself  in  the  manner  most 
adapted  to  the  circumstances  of  the  suffering,  does  not  the 
character  of  the  revelation  vastly  aggravate  the  sinfulness 
of  those  by  whom  God  is  not  sought?  Let  all  ponder  the 
simple  truth,  that  the  having  in  their  hands  a  Bible,  which 
wondrously  exhibits  the  tenderness  of  Deity,  will  leave  us 
without  excuse,  if  not  found  at  last  at  peace  with  our  Maker. 
For  we  are  not  naturally  inaccessible  to  kindness.  We  are 
so  constituted  that  a  word  of  sympathy,  when  we  are  in 
trouble,  goes  at  once  to  the  heart,  and  even  the  look  of  com- 
passion acts  as  a  cordial,  and  excites  grateful  feelings.  We 
have  only  to  be  brought  into  circumstances  of  pain  and  per- 
plexity, and  immediately  we  show  ourselves  acutely  sensitive 
to  the  voice  of  consolation  ;  and  any  of  our  fellow-creatures 
has  only  to  approach  us  in  the  character  of  a  comforter,  and 
we  feel  ourselves  drawn  out  towards  the  benevolent  being, 
and  give  him  at  once  our  thankfulness  and  friendship.  But 
it  is  not  thus  with  reference  to  God.  God  comes  to  us  in  the 
hour  of  anxiety,  bidding  us  cast  all  our  care  upon  him  ;  but 
we  look  round  for  another  resting-place.  He  comes  to  us  in 
the  season  of  affliction,  offering  us  the  oil  and  wine  of  hea- 
venly consolation :  but  we  hew  out  for  ourselves  "  broken 
cisterns."  He  approaches  in  the  moment  of  danger,  proffer- 
ing us  refuge  and  succor  ;  but  we  trust  in  our  own  strength, 
or  seek  help  from  those  who  are  weak  as  ourselves.  But  let 
us  be  well  assured  that  this  single  circumstance,  that  God 


SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT.  361 

hath  revealed  himself  as  a  comforter,  to  those  whose  condi- 
tion makes  them  need  comfort,  will  prove  us  inexcusable,  if 
we  die  without  giving  him  the  heart's  best  affections.  He 
acts  upon  us  in  the  manner  in  which,  both  from  our  neces- 
sities and  our  susceptibilities,  there  is  the  greatest  likelihood 
of  our  being  moved  to  the  making  him  the  prime  object  of 
our  love.-  And  if,  notwithstanding,  we  prefer  the  creature 
to  the  Creator,  what  shall  we  have  to  urge,  when  he,  who 
now  deals  with  us  in  mercy,  begins  to  deal  with  us  in  ven- 
geance ?  Yes,  it  is  not  the  manifestation  of  majesty,  nor  of 
power,  nor  of  awfulness,  which  will  leave  us  inexcusable  ; 
it  is  the  manifestation  of  compassion,  of  good  will,  of  tender- 
ness. A  fallen  and  unhappy  creature,  harassed  by  a  thou- 
sand griefs,  and  exposed  to  a  thousand  perils,  might  have 
shrunk  from  exhibitions  of  Deity  on  his  throne  of  clouds, 
and  in  his  robes  of  light.  He  might  have  pleaded  that  there 
was  every  thing  to  confound,  and  nothing  to  encourage  him. 
But  what  can  he  say.  when  the  exhibitions  are  of  God,  as 
making  all  the  bed  of  the  sick  man  in  his  sickness,  and 
cheering  the  widow  in  her  desolateness,  and  supplying  the 
beggar  in  his  poverty,  and  guarding  the  outcast  in  his  exile  'I 
Are  not  these  exhibitions  touching  enough,  thrilling  enough, 
encouraging  enough  %  Oh,  I  might  perhaps  have  felt  that 
it  was  not  to  prove  the  human  race  necessarily  inexcusable 
in  their  forgetful ness  of  God,  to  say,  none  saith,  where  is 
God  my  Maker  who  is  "  from  everlasting,  and  to  everlasting," 
who  "  sitteth  upon  the  circle  of  the  earth,  and  the  inhabitants 
thereof  are  as  grasshoppers,"  who  "  telleth  the  number  of  the 
stars,  and  calleth  them  all  by  their  names" — but  I  feel  that  it  is 
to  express  such  a  wilful  hard-heartedness  as  must  demand 
and  justify  the  severest  condemnation,  to  say,  "  none  saith, 
where  is  God  my  Maker,  who  giveth  songs  in  the  night?" 

But  we  now  proceed  to  the  showing  you,  as  we  proposed 
in  the  second  place,  with  how  great  truth  and  fitness  this 
touching  description  may  be  applied  to  our  Maker. 

We  have  already  referred  to  the  precise  adaptation  of  the 
Bible  to  our  circumstances,  and  we  would  now  examine  this 
adaptation  with  a  little  more  attention.    We  may  assert  that 
46 


362  SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT 

there  cannot  be  imagined,  much  less  found,  the  darkness,  in 
passing  through  which  there  is  no  promise  of  Scripture  by 
which  you  may  be  cheered.  We  care  not  what  it  is  which 
hath  woven  the  darkness  ;  we  are  sure  that  God  has  made 
provision  for  his  people's  exulting,  rather  than  lamenting,  as 
the  gloom  gathers  round  them,  and  settles  over  them.  What- 
ever be  the  nature  of  the  afflictions  with  which  any  man  has 
been  visited,  can  he  deny,  if  indeed  he  be  one  who  has  re- 
ceived Christ  into  the  soul,  that  he  has  found  "a  word  in 
season  "  in  Scripture  ;  will  he  not,  at  the  least,  confess,  that, 
if  he  have  passed  through  the  period  of  calamity  without 
experiencing  such  consolations  as  filled  him  with  gratitude, 
it  has  been  through  his  own  fault  and  faithlessness,  seeing 
that  even  the  "vale  of  Baca"  can  be  used  by  the  righteous 
"  as  a  well  V 

Let  us  take  the  case  of  most  frequent  occurrence,  but  of 
which  frequency  diminishes  nothing  of  the  bitterness.  We 
mean  the  case  of  the  loss  of  friends,  the  case  in  which  death 
makes  way  into  a  family,  and  carries  off  one  of  the  most  be- 
loved of  its  members.  It  is  night,  deep  night,  in  a  household, 
whensoever  this  occurs.  When  the  loss  is  of  another  kind,  it 
may  admit  of  repair.  Property  may  be  injured,  some  cherish- 
ed plan  may  be  frustrated — but  industry  may  be  again  suc- 
cessful, and  hope  may  fix  its  eye  on  other  objects.  But  when 
those  whom  we  love  best  die,  there  is  no  comfort  of  this  sort 
with  which  we  can  be  comforted.  For  a  time,  at  least,  the 
loss  seems  irreparable  ;  so  that,  though  the  wounded  sensibi- 
lities may  afterwards  be  healed,  and  even  turn  to  the  living 
as  they  turned  to  the  dead,  yet.  whilst  the  calamity  is  fresh, 
we  repulse,  as  injurious,  the  thought  that  the  void  in  our  af- 
fections can  ever  be  filled,  and  are  persuaded  that  the  blank 
in  the  domestic  group  can  be  occupied  by  nothing  but  the 
hallowed  memory  of  the  buried.  It  is  therefore  night  in  the 
household,  darkness,  a  darkness  that  may  be  felt.  And  phi- 
losophy comes  in,  with  its  well-meant  but  idle  endeavors  to 
console  those  who  sit  in  this  darkness.  It  can  speak  of  the 
unavoidableness  of  death,  of  the  duty  of  bearing  with  manly 
fortitude  what  cannot  be  escaped,  of  the  injuriousness  of  ex- 


SONGS    OF    THE    NIGHT.  363 

cessive  grief;  and  it  may  even  hazard  a  conjecture  of  reunion 
in  some  world  beyond  the  grave.  And  pleasure  approaches 
with  its  allurements  and  fascinations,  offering  to  cheat  the 
mind  into  forgetfulness,  and  wile  the  heart  from  its  sadness. 
But  neither  philosophy  nor  pleasure  can  avail  any  thing  in 
the  chamber  of  death— the  taper  of  the  one  is  too  faint  for  so 
oppressive  a  gloom,  and  the  torch  of  the  other  burns  sickly 
in  so  unwonted  an  atmosphere.  Is  then  the  darkness  such 
that  those  whom  it  envelopes  are  incapable  of  being  com- 
forted? Oh,  not  so.  There  maybe  those  amongst  yourselves 
who  can  testify,  that,  even  in  a  night  so  dreary  and  desolate, 
there  is  a  source  whence  consolation  may  be  drawn.  The 
promises  of  Scripture  are  never  more  strikingly  fulfilled  than 
when  death  has  made  an  inroad,  and  taken  away,  at  a  stroke, 
some  object  of  deep  love.  Indeed  it  is  God's  own  word  to  the 
believer,  "  I  will  be  with  him  in  trouble " — as  though  that 
presence,  which  can  never  be  withdrawn,  then  became  more 
real  and  intense. 

What  are  we  to  say  of  cases  which  continually  present 
themselves  to  the  parochial  minister  ?  He  enters  a  house, 
whose  darkened  windows  proclaim  that  one  of  its  inmates  is 
stretched  out  a  corpse.  He  finds  that  it  is  the  fairest  and 
dearest  whom  death  has  made  his  prey,  and  that  the  blow 
has  fallen  where  sure  to  be  most  deeply  felt.  And  he  is  pre- 
pared for  the  burst  of  bitter  sorrow.  He  knows  that  the 
heart,  when  most  purified  by  grace,  is  made  of  feeling  stuff; 
for  grace,  which  removes  the  heart  of  stone,  and  substitutes 
that  of  flesh,  will  refine,  rather  than  extinguish,  human  sen- 
sibilities. But  what  words  does  he  hear  from  lips,  whence 
nothing  but  lamentation  might  have  been  expected  to  issue? 
"  The  Lord  gave,  and  the  Lord  hath  taken  away,  blessed  be 
the  name  of  the  Lord."  The  mother  will  rise  up  from  the 
side  of  her  pale  still  child  ;  and  though  on  the  cheek  of  that 
child  (alas,  never  again  to  be  warm  with  affection)  there  are 
tears  which  show  how  a  parent's  grief  has  overflowed,  she 
will  break  into  the  exclamation  of  the  Psalmist,  "I  will  sing 
of  mercy  and  judgment,  unto  thee,  O  Lord,  will  I  sing."  And 
when,  a  few  days  after,  the  slow  windings  of  the  funeral 


364  SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT. 

procession  are  seen,  and  the  minister  advances  to  meet  the 
train,  and  pours  forth  the  rich  and  inspiriting  words,  "  I  am 
the  Resurrection  and  the  Life,  he  that  believeth  in  me,  though 
he  were  dead,  yet  shall  he  live" — is  it  only  the  low  murmur 
of  suppressed  anguish  by  which  he  is  answered  ?  can  he  not 
feel  that  there  are  those  in  the  group  whose  hearts  bound 
at  the  magnificent  announcement?  and,  as  he  looks  at  the 
mourners,  does  he  not  gather,  from  the  uplifted  eye  and  the 
moving  lip,  that  there  is  one  at  least  who  is  triumphing  in 
the  fulfillment  of  the  prediction,  "  O  death,  I  will  be  thy 
plagues  ;  O  grave,  I  will  be  thy  destruction?" 

And  what  are  we  to  say  to  these  things  ?  what  but  that, 
in  the  deepest  moral  darkness,  there  can  be  music,  music 
which  sounds  softer  and  sweeter  than  by  day ;  and  that, 
when  the  instruments  of  human  melody  are  broken,  there  is 
a  hand  which  can  sweep  the  heartstrings  and  wake  the 
notes  of  praise?  Yes,  philosophy  can  communicate  no  com- 
fort to  the  afflicted  :  it  may  enter  where  all  is  night ;  but  it 
leaves  what  it  found,  even  weeping  and  wailing.  And  plea- 
sure may  take  the  lyre,  whose  trains  have  often  seduced  and 
enchanted  ;  but  the  worn  and  wearied  spirit  has  no  ear,  in 
the  gloom,  for  what  sounded  magically,  when  a  thousand 
lights  were  blazing.  But  religion,  faith  in  the  promises  of 
that  God  who  is  the  Husband  of  the  widow  and  the  Father 
of  the  fatherless,  this  can  cause  the  sorrowing  to  be  glad  in 
the  midst  of  their  sorrow  ;  for  it  is  a  description  which  every 
believer  will  confess  borne  out  by  experience,  that  God  our 
Maker  "  giveth  songs  in  the  night." 

But  again — how  beautifully  accurate  is  this  description, 
if  referred  generally  to  God's  spiritual  dealings  with  our  race. 
It  may  well  be  said,  that,  so  soon  as  man  had  fallen,  it  was 
night  on  this  creation.  The  creature  had  shut  itself  out  from 
the  favor  of  the  Creator  ;  and  what  was  this  but  to  shroud 
the  globe  with  the  worst  of  all  darkness  ?  It  was  a  darkness 
which  no  efforts  of  the  human  mind  have  been  able  to  dis- 
perse. There  is  a  point  up  to  which  natural  theology  has 
advanced,  but  which  it  has  never  passed.  It  has  discovered 
a  want,  but  not  a  supply ;  it  has  detected  a  disease,  but  not 


SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT.  365 

its  remedy.  We  do  not  perhaps  need  the  written  word,  in 
order  to  our  ascertaining  that  we  are  exposed  to  God's  wrath. 
The  remonstrances  and  forebodings  of  conscience  are,  in 
themselves,  sufficient  to  excite  in  us  a  belief  and  dread  of 
judgment  to  come,  and  perhaps  to  extort  from  us  the  inquiry, 
"  What  must  I  do  to  be  saved  I"  But  the  answer  to  this  in- 
quiry can  be  furnished  only  by  a  higher  and  deeper  than 
natural  theology.  We  make  some  way  by  groping  in  the 
darkness,  but  cannot  emerge  into  the  light. 

But,  God  be  thanked,  man  was  not  left  to  complain,  and 
lament,  in  the  midst  of  that  darkness  which  his  apostasy 
wove.  There  were  provisions  for  his  rescue,  which  came 
into  force  at  the  moment  of  transgression.  No  sooner  had 
man  fallen  than  prophecy,  in  the  form  of  a  promise,  took  the 
span  of  time,  and  gathered  into  a  sentence  the  moral  history 
of  the  world.  And  we  have  great  reason  for  believing  that 
even  unto  Adam  did  this  promise  speak  of  good  things  to 
come,  and  that  he  was  comforted,  in  his  exile  from  Paradise, 
by  the  hope  which  it  gave  him  of  final  deliverance.  Com- 
pelled though  he  was  to  till  an  earth,  on  which  rested  the 
curse  of  its  Creator,  he  may  have  known  that  there  was 
blessing  in  store  ;  and  that,  though  he  and  his  children  must 
dig  the  ground  in  the  sweat  of  their  brow,  there  would  fall 
on  it  a  sweat  like  great  drops  of  blood,  having  virtue  to  re- 
move the  oppressive  malediction.  It  must  have  been  bitter 
to  him  to  hear  of  the  thorn  and  the  thistle  ;  but  he  may  have 
learnt  how  thorns  would  be  woven  into  a  crown,  and  placed 
round  the  forehead  of  one  who  should  be  the  lost  "  tree  of 
life  "  to  a  dying  creation.  It  was  only  to  have  been  expected, 
when  the  fatal  act  had  been  committed,  that  there  would 
have  ascended  from  the  earth  one  fearful  cry,  and  that  then 
an  eternal  silence  would  have  covered  the  desecrated  globe. 
But,  in  place  of  this — though  the  gathered  night  was  not  at 
once  dispersed — there  still  went  up  the  anthem  of  praise  from 
lowing  herds,  and  waving  corn,  and  stately  forests  ;  and  man, 
in  his  exile,  had  an  evening  and  a  morning  hymn,  which 
spake  gratefully  of  the  head  of  the  serpent  as  bruised  by  the 
seed  of  the  woman — and  all  because  God  had  alreadv  dis- 


obb  SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT. 

covered  himself  as  our  Maker  ':  who  giveth  songs  in  the 
night." 

Thus  also  it  has  been,  and  is,  with  individual  cases. 
There  may  be  many  in  this  assembly  who  have  known 
what  it  is  to  be  oppressed  with  apprehensions  of  God's  wrath 
against  sin.  They  have  passed  through  that  dreary  season, 
when  conscience,  often  successfully  resisted,  or  dragged  into 
slumber,  mightily  asserts  its  authority,  arrays  the  transgres- 
sions of  a  life,  and  anticipates  the  penalties  of  an  eternity. 
And  we  say  of  the  man  who  is  suffering  from  conviction  of 
sin,  that  it  is  more  truly  night  with  him,  the  night  of  the 
soul,  than  with  the  most  wretched  of  those  on  whom  lie  the 
burdens  of  temporal  wo.  And  natural  theology,  as  we  have 
already  stated,  can  offer  no  encouragement  in  this  utter  mid- 
night. It  may  have  done  its  part  in  producing  the  convic- 
tions, but,  in  so  doing,  must  have  exhausted  its  resources. 
All  its  efforts  must  have  been  directed  to  the  furnishing  de- 
monstrations of  the  inflexible  government  of  a  God  of  jus- 
tice and  righteousness  ;  and  the  more  powerful  these  de- 
monstrations, the  more  would  they  shut  up  the  transgressor 
to  the  certainty  of  destruction.  And  nevertheless,  after  a 
time,  you  find  the  man,  who  had  been  brought  into  so  awful 
a  darkness,  and  for  whose  comfort  there  is  nothing  to  be 
gained  from  natural  theology,  walking  in  gladness,  with  a 
lightened  heart  and  a  buoyant  spirit.  What  could  not  be 
found  in  the  stores  of  natural  theology,  has  been  found  in 
those  of  revealed  intelligence,  that  God  can,  at  the  same 
time,  be  just  and  a  justifier,  that  sinners  can  be  pardoned, 
and  sins  not  go  unpunished.  Therefore  is  it  that  he  who 
was  in  darkness,  the  darkness  of  the  soul,  is  now  lifting  up 
his  head  with  joy,  and  exulting  in  hope.  The  Spirit  of 
God,  which  produced  the  conviction,  has  taken  of  the  things 
of  Christ,  and,  showing  them  to  the  soul,  made  them  effec- 
tual to  conversion.  And  we  call  upon  you  to  compare  the 
man  in  these  two  estates.  With  his  consciousness  of  the 
evil  of  sin  heightened,  rather  than  diminished,  you  find  him 
changed  from  the  desponding  into  the  triumphant ;  exhibit- 
ing, in  the  largest  measure,  the  accomplishment  of  the  words, 


SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT.  367 

that  there  shall  be  given  "  beauty  for  ashes,  the  oil  of  joy 
for  mourning,  and  the  garment  of  praise  for  the  spirit  of 
heaviness."  You  can  offer  no  account  of  this  surprising 
transformation,  whilst  you  search  for  its  reasons  in  natural 
causes.  But  when  you  appeal  to  the  workings  of  Omnipo- 
tence ;  when  you  tell  us  of  a  propitiation  for  sin  ;  when  you 
refer  to  a  divine  agent,  whose  special  office  it  is,  to  bring 
men  to  put  faith  in  a  sacrifice  which  reconciled  a  guilty 
world  to  its  Creator — then  you  leave  no  cause  for  surprise, 
that,  from  a  soul,  round  which  had  gathered  deep  and  stern 
shadows,  there  should  be  ascending  the  rich  notes  of  praise, 
and  the  stirring  strains  of  hope  ;  but  then  you  are  only  prov- 
ing with  what  exquisite  truth  it  may  be  said,  that  God  our 
Maker  "  giveth  songs  in  the  night." 

We  might  easily  multiply  our  illustrations.  We  might 
follow  the  believer  through  all  the  stages  of  his  progress 
from  earth  to  heaven ;  and  wheresoever  you  could  show 
that  it  was  night,  there  could  we  show  you  that  God  "  giveth 
songs."  It  is  not  that  he  giveth  no  songs  in  the  day ;  for  he 
is  with  his  people,  and  he  wakes  their  praises,  in  all  time  of 
their  wealth,  as  well  as  in  all  time  of  their  tribulation.  But 
it  is  our  nature  to  rejoice  when  all  within  and  without  is  un- 
disturbed ;  the  miracle  is  to  "  rejoice  in  tribulation  ;"  and 
this  miracle  is  continually  wrought  as  the  believer  presses 
through  the  wilderness.  The  harp  of  the  human  spirit  never 
yields  such  sweet  music,  as  when  its  framework  is  most  shat- 
tered, and  its  strings  are  most  torn.  Then  it  is,  when  the 
world  pronounces  the  instrument  useless,  and  man  would 
put  it  away  as  incapable  of  melody,  that  the  finger  of  God 
delights  in  touching  it,  and  draws  from  it  a  fine  swell  of 
harmony.  Come  night,  come  calamity,  come  affliction.  God 
still  says  to  his  people,  as  he  said  to  the  Jews,  when  expect- 
ing the  irruption  of  the  Assyrian,  "  ye  shall  have  a  song,  as 
in  the  night." 

Is  it  the  loss  of  property  with  which  believers  are  visited  ? 
Our  Maker  "  giveth  songs  in  the  night,"  and  the  chorus  is 
heard,  we  have  in  heaven  "  a  better,  even  an  enduring  sub- 
stance." Is  it  the  loss  of  friends  1  Our  Maker,  as  we  have 
shown  you,  "giveth songs  in  the  night;"  they  "sorrow  not, 


368  SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT. 

even  as  others  which  have  no  hope  ;"  and  over  the  very  grave 
is  heard  the  fine  confession,  "  Blessed  are  the  dead  which  die 
in  the  Lord."  Have  they  their  seasons  of  spiritual  depression, 
when  they  cannot  realize  their  privileges,  nor  assure  them- 
selves of  acceptance  with  God  ?  Indeed  this  is  hard  to  bear- — 
perhaps  the  severest  of  the  trials  which  they  are  called  to 
endure.  This  was  David's  case,  when  he  pathetically  ex- 
claimed, "  Deep  calleth  unto  deep,  at  the  noise  of  thy  water- 
spouts ;  all  thy  waves  and  thy  billows  are  gone  over  me." 
Yet  the  Psalmist  could  go  on,  in  the  very  next  verse,  to  de- 
clare, "  The  Lord  will  command  his  loving-kindness  in  the 
day-time,  and  in  the  night  his  song  shall  be  with  me."  And 
no  believer  holds  fast  his  confidence,  as  David  did,  without 
proving,  that,  if  God  hide  for  a  while  the  light  of  his  coun- 
tenance, it  is  in  order  to  make  it  more  valued  ;  without  find- 
ing cause  to  break  into  the  song,  "  it  is  good  for  me  that  I 
was  afflicted."  Let  the  thickest  night  gather  ;  let  death  be 
at  hand  ;  and  shall  it  be  said  that  our  text  fails  of  accom- 
plishment? On  the  contrary,  it  is  here  emphatically  true 
that  our  Maker  "  giveth  songs  in  the  night."  The  believer 
in  Christ  knows  and  feels  that  his  Redeemer  "hath  abolish- 
ed death."  He  is  not  insensible  to  the  terrors  of  death  ;  for 
he  reo-ards  the  separation  of  soul  and  body  as  a  direct  conse- 
quence of  the  original  curse,  and  therefore  awful  and  disas- 
trous. But  then  he  is  so  assured  of  immortality  and  a  resur- 
rection, that  he  can  approach  the  grave  with  confidence,  and 
even  exult  that  his  departure  is  at  hand.  What  upholds  the 
dying  man?  What  throws  over  his  wasted  countenance  that 
air  of  serenity?  What  prompts  those  expressions  of  peace, 
those  breathings  of  hope,  which  seem  so  little  in  accordance 
with  his  circumstances  of  trouble  and  decay  ?  It  is  that  God 
is  whispering  to  his  soul  such  words  as  these,  "  Fear  thou 
not,  for  I  am  with  thee  ;  be  not  dismayed,  for  I  am  thy  God  ; 
I  will  strengthen  thee,  yea,  I  will  help  thee."  It  is  that  his 
Maker  is  reminding  him  of  the  pledge,  that  death  shall  be 
swallowed  up  in  victory  ;  that  he  is  already  causing  the 
minstrelsy  of  the  eternal  city  to  come  stealing  on  his  ear— 
and  is  not  all  this  the  most  convincing  and  touching  evi- 
dence, that  God  our  Maker  "giveth  songs  in  the  night?" 


SONGS    IN    THE    NIGHT.  369 

Who  would  not  be  a  believer  in  Christ,  who  would  not  be 
tit  peace  with  God  ?  When  such  are  the  privileges  of  righte- 
ousness, the  privileges  through  life,  the  privileges  in  death, 
the  wonder  is,  that  all  are  not  eager  to  close  with  the  offers  of 
the  Gospel,  and  make  those  privileges  their  own.  Yet,  alas, 
the  ministers  of  Christ  have  to  exclaim,  with  the  prophet, 
"  who  hath  believed  our  report?"  and,  with  Elihu,  "  none 
saith,  where  is  God  rny  Maker,  who  giveth  songs  in  the 
night?"  There  may  yet  be  moral  insensibility  in  numbers 
who  hear  me.  What  shall  we  say  to  them  ?  They  may  have 
youth  on  their  side,  and  health,  and  plenty.  The  sky  may 
be  clear,  and  the  voice  of  joy  may  be  heard  in  their  dwelling. 
Bui  there  must  come  a  night,  a  dreary  and  oppressive  night ; 
for  youth  must  depart,  and  strength  be  enfeebled,  and  sorrow 
encountered,  and  the  shadows  of  evening  fall  upon  the  path. 
And  what  will  they  do  then,  if  now,  as  God  complains  by 
his  prophet,  <:  the  harp  and  the  viol,  the  tabret,  and  pipe, 
and  wine,  are  in  their  feasts,  but  they  regard  not  the  work 
of  the  Lord,  neither  consider  the  operation  of  his  hands  ?" 
They  may  have  their  song  now ;  but  then  we  shall  have 
only  the  bitter  exclamation,  "  the  harvest  is  passed,  the  sum- 
mer is  ended,  and  we  are  not  saved."  We  warn  you  in  time. 
Though  the  firmament  be  bright,  we  show  you  the  cloud, 
small  as  a  man's  hand,  already  rising  from  the  sea ;  and  we 
urge  you  to  the  breaking  loose  from  habits  of  sin,  and  fleeing 
straightway  to  the  Mediator  Christ.  It  is  for  baubles  which 
they  despise  when  acquired,  wealth  which  they  count  no- 
thing when  gained,  gratifications  which  they  loathe  so  soon 
as  passed,  that  men  sell  their  souls.  And  all  that  we  now  en- 
treat of  the  young,  is,  that  they  will  not,  in  the  spring-time 
of  life,  strike  this  foul  bargain.  In  the  name  of  Him  who 
made  you,  we  beseech  you  to  separate  yourselves  at  once 
from  evil  practices  and  evil  associates ;  lest,  in  that  darkest 
of  all  darkness,  when  the  sun  is  to  be  "  black  as  sackcloth  of 
hair,"  and  the  moon  as  blood,  and  the  stars  are  to  fall,  you  may 
utter  nothing  but  the  passionate  cry  of  despair  ;  whilst  the 
righteous  are  lifting  up  their  heads  with  joy,  and  proving  that 
they  have  trusted  in  a  God  "  who  giveth  songs  in  the  night." 
47 


SERMON    III 


TESTIMONY  CONFIRMED  BY  EXPERIENCE, 


•'  As  we  have  heard,  so  have  we  seen,  in  the  eity  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  it 
the  city  of  our  God  ;  God  will  establish  it  for  ever."— Psalm  48  :  8. 

There  is  a  very  striking  part  in  the  Litany  of  our  church, 
when,  between  two  earnest  supplications  for  deliverance, 
God  is  reminded  of  the  great  things  which  he  had  wrought 
in  former  times.  The  supplications  to  which  we  refer  are 
put  into  the  mouths  of  the  people.  "  O  Lord,  arise,  help  us, 
and  deliver  us  for  thy  name's  sake."  "  O  Lord,  arise,  help 
us,  and  deliver  us  for  thine  honor."  Between  these  the  mi- 
nister is  directed  to  exclaim,  "  O  God,  we  have  heard  with 
our  ears,  and  our  fathers  have  declared  unto  us,  the  noble 
works  that  thou  didst  in  their  days,  and  in  the  old  time  be- 
fore them."  We  are  always  much  struck  with  this  exclama- 
tion, and  with  the  consequent  alteration  in  the  plea  with 
which  the  people  urge  their  suit  for  deliverance.  In  the  first 
petition  it  is,  "  deliver  us  for  thy  name's  sake  ;"  in  the  se- 
cond, "  deliver  us  for  thine  honor."  The  minister  has  heard 
the  congregation  invoking  God  to  come  forth  to  their  succor, 
and  humbly  reminding  him  how  consistent  it  would  be  with 
all  the  attributes  of  his  nature — for  these  are  included  in  his 
name — to  comply  with  their  earnest  supplication.  And  then 
the  minister,  as  though  he  knew  that  there  was  yet  higher 
ground  which  the  people  might  take,  commemorates  the 


TESTIMONY    CONFIRMED    BY    EXPERIENCE.  371 

marvellous  interpositions  of  which  olden  times  had  set  down 
the  records,  reminding  the  congregation,  by  making  confes- 
sion to  God,  of  deliverances  wrought  on  behalf  of  their  fa- 
thers. The  people  are  animated  by  the  recollection.  They 
feel  that  God  has  pledged  himself,  by  former  answers  to 
prayer,  to  arise,  and  shield  those  who  cast  themselves  on  his 
help.  His  own  glory  has  become  concerned  in  the  not  leav- 
ing such  to  perish  ;  and  shall  they  not  then,  with  fresh  con- 
fidence, reiterate  their  petition  1  No  sooner  therefore  has 
the  minister  commemorated  God's  mercies,  than  the  people, 
as  though  they  had  a  new  source  of  hope,  press  their  suit 
with  yet  greater  earnestness  ;  and  their  voices  mingle  in  the 
cry,  "  O  Lord,  arise,  help  us,  and  deliver  us  for  thine  ho- 
nor." Is  not  this  portion  of  our  Litany  constructed  on  the 
principle,  that,  what  we  have  heard  of  God's  doings  in  other 
times,  we  may  expect  to  see  or  experience  in  our  own,  pro- 
vided only  there  be  similarity  of  circumstance  1  are  not,  in 
short,  the  exclamation  of  the  minister,  and  the  consequent 
petition  of  the  people,  the  expressions  of  a  hope,  or  rather  a 
belief,  that  the  words  of  our  text  shall  again  be  appropriate, 
"  as  we  have  heard,  so  have  we  seen,  in  the  city  of  the  Lord 
of  Hosts  ?" 

It  must  have  been  to  some  special  instance  in  which  God 
had  wrought  a  deliverance,  parallel  to  one  celebrated  in 
Jewish  annals,  that  reference  is  made  in  our  text.  The 
statement  is  exactly  what  would  be  uttered,  if  the  parties, 
who  have  joined  in  the  quoted  sentences  of  our  Litany,  were 
to  become  the  subjects  of  a  divine  interposition,  similar  to 
those  which  the  minister  commemorated.  But  it  is  observed 
by  Bishop  Horsley,  that  there  is  no  recorded  interference  of 
God  on  behalf  of  Jerusalem,  which  answers  to  the  language 
employed  in  this  Psalm.  And  it  is  therefore  probable  that  a 
prophetic,  or,  at  least,  a  spiritual  interpretation  must  be  given 
to  the  hymn.  Indeed  there  are  expressions  which  will  not 
admit  of  being  applied  to  the  literal  Jerusalem.  Thus,  in 
our  text,  it  is  said  of  the  city  of  our  God,  "  God  will  establish 
it  for  ever  " — a  prediction  which  cannot  belong  to  the  metro- 
polis of  Judea,  which  was  often  given  up  to  the  spoiler,  but 


372  TESTIMONY    CONFIRMED 

which  holds  good  of  that  spiritual  city,  the  Church  of  God, 
against  which  Christ  declared  that  "  the  gates  of  hell  shall 
never  prevail."  And  when,  towards  the  conclusion  of  the 
Psalm,  the  succored  people  are  bidden  to  march,  in  joyful 
procession  round  their  beautiful  city,  that  they  might  see 
how  unscathed  were  its  walls,  how  glorious  its  structures — 
"  walk  about  Zion.  and  go  round  about  her  ;  tell  the  towers 
thereof;  mark  ye  well  her  bulwarks,  consider  her  palaces, 
that  ye  may  tell  it  to  the  generation  following" — you  can 
scarcely  fail  to  feel,  that  the  thing  enjoined  is  the  consider- 
ing and  admiring  the  privileges  and  securities  of  the  church, 
in  order  that  we  may  both  prize  them  ourselves,  and  be  in- 
cited to  the  preserving  them  for  our  children. 

We  may  therefore  regard  our  text  as  uttered  by  members 
of  the  Church  of  Christ,  that  city  of  God  which  is  made 
glad  by  the  streams  of  the  river  of  life.  It  is  an  assertion, 
made  by  those  who  had  fled  to  the  church  for  safety,  ex- 
pecting deliverance  within  its  walls,  that  their  own  experi- 
ence bore  out  to  the  letter  what  had  been  reported  by  the 
believers  of  other  days.  The  difference  between  hearing 
and  seeing,  of  which  they  make  mention,  is  the  difference 
between  receiving  truth  on  the  testimony  of  others,  and 
the  being  ourselves  its  witnesses — a  distinction  such  as  that 
which  the  Patriarch  Job  drew,  when  humbled  through  a 
personal  acquaintance  with  the  dealings  of  God,  "  I  have 
heard  of  thee  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear,  but  now  mine  eye 
seeth  thee  ;  wherefore  I  abhor  myself,  and  repent  in  dust 
and  ashes."  And  the  great  principle,  or  fact,  which  it  will 
become  us  to  endeavor  to  establish  and  illustrate,  in  dis- 
coursing on  our  text,  is,  that  before  there  is  any  personal 
experience  in  matters  of  religion,  there  may  be  an  acting  on 
the  experience  of  others,  and  that,  wheresoever  this  is  faith- 
fully done,  the  personal  experience  will  be  the  probable  re- 
sult. We  proceed  at  once  to  the  exhibiting  this  principle  or 
fact ;  designing  to  adduce,  if  possible,  the  most  practical,  as 
well  as  the  most  apposite  instances,  in  which  men  may  say, 
"  as  we  have  heard,  so  have  we  seen,  in  the  city  of  the  Lord 
of  Hosts." 


BY    EXPERIENCE.  373 

Now  we  shall  begin  with  an  application  of  the  principle 
involved  in  our  text,  which  has  been  made  at  great  length 
by  modern  writers,*  and  whose  importance  seems  to  claim 
for  it  the  closest  attention.  We  refer  to  the  way  in  which 
men  reach  their  persuasion  that  the  Bible  is  God's  word  ; 
for  they  evidently,  for  the  most  part,  receive  the  Bible  as  in- 
spired, long  before  they  can  prove  any  thing  in  regard  of  its 
inspiration.  We  put  the  Bible  into  the  hands  of  our  chil- 
dren, as  the  word  of  the  living  God,  and  therefore  demand- 
ing a  reverence  which  can  be  claimed  by  no  other  volume 
in  the  whole  circle  of  authorship.  And  our  children  grow 
up  with  what  might  almost  be  called  an  innate  persuasion 
of  the  inspiration  of  Scripture ;  they  are  all  but  born  with 
the  belief;  and  they  carry  it  with  them  to  riper  years,  rather 
as  a  received  axiom,  than  as  a  demonstrated  verity.  It  is 
almost  exclusively  on  hearsay,  if  we  may  use  the  word,  that 
the  Bible  is  taken  as  divine,  and  the  Apocrypha  passed  by 
as  human  ;  so  that  numbers,  who  are  perhaps  strenuous  for 
the  right  of  private  judgment,  do  virtually,  in  the  most  im- 
portant matter,  receive  and  reject  on  the  sole  authority  of 
the  church. 

And  it  is  well  that  it  is  so.  If  there  were  nothing  of  this 
taking  upon  trust ;  if  every  man,  in  place  of  having  to  set 
himself  to  the  perusal  of  a  volume  which  he  regards  as  di- 
vine, must  first  pick  out  by  laborious  study,  from  all  the 
authorship  of  antiquity,  the  few  pages  which  really  bear  the 
signature  of  heaven,  there  would  be  an  arrest  on  the  pro- 
gress of  Christianity  ;  for  the  life  of  each  would  be  exhaust- 
ed, ere  he  had  constructed  the  book  by  which  he  must  be 
guided.  And  yet  it  cannot  be  taken  as  a  very  satisfactory 
account  of  human  belief,  that  it  thus  follows  upon  human 
bidding.  But  it  is  here,  as  we  believe,  that  the  principle  of 
our  text  comes  beautifully  into  operation.  The  church,  like 
the  parent  of  a  family,  gives  a  volume  into  the  hands  of 
those  who  join  her  communion,  bidding  them  receive  it  as 
divine,  and  study  it  as  the  word  which  can  alone  guide  them 

*  Particularly  Dr.  Chalmers,  in  the  fourth  volume  of  his  works. 


374  TESTIMONY    CONFIRMED 


hold,  have  no  better  reason,  at  first,  for  receiving  the  Bible 
as  inspired,  than  because  they  have  heard  so  in  the  city  of* 
the  Lord.  They  yield  so  much  of  respect  to  the  directions 
of  their  authorized  teachers,  or  to  the  impressions  which 
have  been  graven  on  them  from  infancy,  as  to  give  their 
homage  to  a  volume  which  is  presumed  to  bear  so  lofty  a 
character.  But  then,  though  it  may  thus  be  on  hearsay  that 
they  first  receive  the  Bible  as  inspired,  it  is  not  on  hearsay 
that  they  continue  to  receive  it.  We  speak  now  of  those 
who  have  searched  the  Scriptures  for  everlasting  life,  and 
who  feel  that  they  have  found  therein  a  revelation  of  the 
alone  mode  of  forgiveness.  We  speak  of  those  in  whom  the 
word  has  "  wrought  effectually  ;"  and  we  confidently  affirm 
of  them,  that,  though  at  one  time  they  believed  in  the  inspi- 
ration of  the  canonical  Scriptures,  because  their  parents 
taught  it,  or  their  ministers  maintained  it,  yet  now  are 
they  in  possession  of  a  personal,  experimental,  evidence, 
which  is  thoroughly  conclusive  on  this  fundamental  point. 
It  is  not  that  they  have  gone  through  the  laborious  demon- 
strations by  which  the  learned  have  sustained  the  claims  of 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  It  is  comparatively  a  very 
small  fraction  of  a  community  who  can  examine  the  grounds 
on  which  the  church  rests  her  judgment;  and  it  is  with  the 
case  of  the  great  mass  that  we  now  wish  to  deal. 

But  we  will  give  you  what  we  reckon  the  history  of  the 
uneducated  believer,  so  far  as  his  acquaintance  with  revela- 
tion is  concerned.  He  may  perhaps  have  been  neglected  in 
boyhood,  so  that  he  has  grown  up  in  ignorance  ;  but  he  is 
visited  by  the  minister  of  his  parish  in  some  seasons  of  af- 
liiction,  when  the  ruggedness  of  his  nature  is  somewhat  worn 
down  by  sorrow.  The  minister  presses  upon  him  the  study 
of  the  Bible,  as  of  the  word  of  his  Creator,  assuring  him  that 
he  will  therein  find  God's  will  as  revealed  by  his  Spirit. 
The  cottager  has  undoubtedly  heard  of  the  Bible  before  ; 
and  it  is  no  news  to  him,  that  it  passes  as  a  more  than  hu- 
man book.  But  he  has  never  yet  given  heed  to  what  he 
heard  :  the  book  has  been  unopened,  notwithstanding  the 


BV    EXPERIENCE.  375 

high  claims  which  it  was  known  to  advance.  But  now, 
softened  by  the  minister's  kindness,  and  moved  by  his  state- 
ments, he  sets  himself  diligently  to  the  perusal  of  Scripture, 
and  statedly  attends  its  Sabbath  expositions.  And  thus, 
though  he  is  acting  only  on  what  he  has  heard,  he  brings 
himself  under  the  self-evidencing  power  of  Scripture,  that 
power  by  which  the  contents  of  the  Bible  serve  as  its  creden- 
tials. And  this  self-evidencing  power  is  wonderfully  great. 
The  more  than  human  knowledge  which  Scripture  displays 
in  regard  of  the  most  secret  workings  of  the  heart ;  the  mar- 
vellous and  unerring  precision  with  which  the  provisions  of 
the  Gospel  adapt  themselves  to  the  known  wants  and  disa- 
bilities of  our  nature  ;  the  constancy  with  which  the  promises 
and  directions  of  holy  writ,  if  put  to  the  proof,  are  made  good 
in  one's  own  case — these  and  the  like  evidences  of  the  di- 
vine origin  of  the  Bible,  press  themselves  quickly  on  the 
most  illiterate  student,  when  he  searches  it  in  humility,  hop- 
ing to  find,  as  he  has  been  told  that  he  shall,  a  message 
from  God  which  will  guide  him  towards  heaven.  He  be- 
gan on  the  testimony  of  another  ;  but,  after  a  while,  he  goes 
forward  on  his  own  testimony.  And  though  he  has  not 
been  sitting  in  judgment  on  the  credentials  of  Christianity, 
yet  has  he  possessed  himself  of  its  contents  ;  and  on  these  he 
has  found  so  much  of  the  impress,  and  from  them  there  has 
issued  so  much  of  the  voice  of  Deity,  that  he  is  as  certified 
in  his  own  mind,  and  on  grounds  as  satisfactory,  of  the  in- 
spiration of  Scripture,  as  any  laborious  and  scientific  in- 
quirer, who  has  rifled  the  riches  of  centuries,  and  brought 
them  all  to  do  homage  before  our  holy  religion.  God  has 
no  more  given  to  the  learned  the  monopoly  of  evidence, 
than  to  the  wealthy  the  monopoly  of  benevolence.  The 
poor  man  can  exercise  benevolence,  for  the  widow's  two 
mites  may  outweigh  the  noble's  coffers  :  and  the  poor  man 
may  have  an  evidence  that  God  is  in  the  Bible,  for  it  may 
speak  to  his  heart  as  no  human  book  can. 

And  if  you  contrast  the  man,  when  the  minister  of  Christ 
first  entered  his  cottage,  with  what  he  is  after  patient  obedi- 
ence to  the  injunctions  of  the  church — in  the  one  case,  the 


376  TESTIMONY    CONFIRMED 

mere  giver  of  assent  to  a  fellow-man's  testimony  ;  in  the 
other,  the  delighted  possessor  of  a  "witness  in  himself;"  in 
the  first  instance,  a  believer  not  so  much  in  the  inspiration 
of  Scripture,  as  in  the  veracity  of  the  individual  who  an- 
nounces it,  but,  in  the  second,  a  believer  in  that  inspiration, 
because  conscience  and  understanding  and  heart  have  all 
felt  and  confessed  the  superhuman  authorship — Oh,  as, 
by  thus  contrasting  and  comparing,  you  determine,  that, 
through  simply  acting  on  what  was  told  him,  the  man  has 
been  carried  forward  to  a  personal,  experimental,  demon- 
stration of  its  truth,  you  must  admit  that  he  may  class  him- 
self with  those  who  can  say,  "  as  we  have  heard,  so  have 
we  seen,  in  the  city  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts." 

But  the  principle  has  been  carried  yet  further  than  this, 
and,  we  think,  with  great  justice.  It  must  be  believed  of 
the  large  mass  of  protestants,  that  they  have  never  even 
read  the  apocryphal  books,  much  less  searched  into  the 
reasons  on  which  these  books  are  pronounced  not  inspired. 
Here  therefore  it  cannot  be  said,  that  what  has  been  heard 
is  also  seen  in  the  city  of  our  God.  We  can  prove  this  in 
regard  of  the  Canonical  Scriptures,  because  we  can  prove, 
that,  when  perused  in  obedience  to  what  is  heard,  they 
quickly  evidence  their  origin.  But  we  seem  unable  to  prove 
this  in  regard  of  the  Apocryphal  Scriptures  ;  for  they  are 
not  used  to  be  subjected  to  any  such  test. 

But  suppose  they  were  subjected  to  the  like  test,  and  why 
might  we  not  expect  the  like  result  ?  There  is  to  our  mind 
something  inexpressibly  grand  and  beautiful  in  the  thought, 
(hat  God  dwells,  as  it  were,  in  the  syllables  which  he  has 
indited  for  the  instruction  of  humankind,  so  that  he  may  be 
found  there  when  diligently  sought,  though  he  do  not  thus 
inhabit  any  other  writing.  He  breathed  himself  into  the 
compositions  of  prophets,  and  apostles,  and  evangelists  ;  and 
there,  as  in  the  mystic  recesses  of  an  everlasting  sanctuary, 
he  still  resides,  ready  to  disclose  himself  to  the  humble,  and 
to  be  evoked  by  the  prayerful.  But  in  regard  of  every  other 
book,  however  fraught  it  may  be  with  the  maxims  of  piety, 
however  pregnant  with  momentous  truths,  there  is  nothing 


BY    EXPERIENCE.  377 

of  this  shrining  himself  of  Deity  in  the  depths  of  its  mean- 
ing. Men  may  be  instructed  by  its  pages,  and  draw  from 
them  hope  and  consolation.  But  never  will  they  find  there 
the  burning  Shekinah,  which  proclaims  the  actual  presence 
of  God  ;  never  hear  a  voice,  as  from  the  solitudes  of  an 
oracle,  pronouncing  the  words  of  immortality. 

And  we  should  never  fear  the  bringing  any  canonical 
book,  or  any  apocryphal,  to  the  test  thus  supposed.     Let  a 
man  take  a  cauonical  book,  and  let  him  take  an  apocryphal ; 
and  let  him  determine  to  study  both  on  the  supposition  that 
both  are  divine,  because  doubtful  whether  the  church  be 
right  in  her  decision,  or  desirous  to  gain  evidence  for  him- 
self.   And  if  he  be  a  sincere  inquirer  after  truth,  one  really 
anxious  to  ascertain,  in  order  that  he  may  perform,  the 
whole  will  of  God,  we  know  not  why  he  should  not  expe- 
rience the  accomplishment  of  Christ's  words,  "  If  any  man 
will  do  his  will,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine  whether  it  be 
of  God,"  and  thus  reach  a  sound  decision  as  to  which  book 
is  inspired,  and  which  not.     As  he  studies  the  inspired  book, 
with  humility  and  prayer,  he  will  find  its  statements  brought 
home  to  his  conscience  and  heart,  with  that  extraordinary 
force  which  is  never  attached  to  a  human  composition.     He 
may  not  be  able  to  construct  a  clear  argument  for  the  divine 
origin  of  the  book ;  yet  will  the  correspondence  between  what 
the  book  states,  and  what  he  experiences,  and  the  constancy 
with  which  the  fulfillment  of  its  promises  follows  on  submis- 
sion to  its  precepts,  combine  into  an  evidence,  thoroughly 
satisfactory  to  himself,  that  the  pages  which  he  reads  had 
God  for  their  author.     But  as  he  studies  the  non-inspired 
book,  he  will  necessarily  miss  these  tokens  and  impresses  of 
Deity.   There  will  be  none  of  those  mysterious  soundings  of 
the  voice  of  the  ever-living  God,  which  he  has  learnt  to  ex- 
pect, and  which  he  has  always  heard,  wheresoever  the  wri- 
ters have  indeed  been  inspired.    His  own  diligence  may  be 
the  same,  his  faith,  his  prayerfulness.     But  it  is  impossible 
there  should  be  those  manifestations  of  superhuman  wisdom, 
those  invariable  sequences  of  fulfilled  promises  on  obeyed 
precepts,  which,  in  the  other  case,  attested,  at  each  step  of 
48 


«W0  TESTIMONY    CONFIRMED 

his  progress,  that  the  document  in  his  hands  was  a  revela- 
tion from  above. 

It  may  be  said  that  all  the  argument,  which  he  can  thus 
obtain,  must  be  vague  and  inconclusive,  a  thing  of  imagin- 
ation rather  than  of  reason,  and  therefore,  in  the  largest 
sense,  liable  to  error.  But  we  rejoice,  on  the  contrary,  in 
believing  in  the  thorough  sufficiency  of  the  poor  man's  ar- 
gument for  the  inspiration  of  Scripture.  It  is  an  argument 
to  his  own  conscience,  an  argument  to  his  own  heart.  It  is 
the  argument  drawn  from  the  experienced  fact,  that  the 
Bible  and  the  soul,  with  her  multiplied  feelings  and  powers, 
tit  into  each  other,  like  two  parts  of  a  complicated  machine, 
proving,  in  their  combination,  that  each  was  separately  the 
work  of  the  same  divine  artist.  And  you  may  think  that 
the  poor  man  may  be  mistaken  ;  but  he  feels  that  he  can- 
not be  mistaken.  The  testimony  is  like  a  testimony  to  his 
senses  ;  if  he  cannot  transfer  it  to  another,  it  is  incontest- 
able to  himself,  and  therefore  gives  as  much  fixedness  to 
the  theology  of  the  cottage  as  ever  belonged  to  the  theology 
of  the  academy. 

And  if  he  can  thus  prove,  from  his  own  experience,  the 
divine  origin  of  the  inspired  book,  he  may  of  course  equally 
prove,  from  his  own  experience,  the  human  origin  of  the 
non-inspired.  The  absence  of  certain  tokens  in  the  one 
case,  will  be  as  conclusive  to  him  as  their  presence  in  the 
other.  So  that,  we  may  affirm  of  all  classes  of  christians, 
provided  only  they  be  sincere  and  prayerful  in  their  in- 
quiry after  truth,  that,  if  not  content  with  the  decision  of 
the  church,  they  may  put  to  the  proof  what  they  have  heard 
in  the  city  of  our  God.  Let  them  take  the  apocrypha,  and 
let  them  study  it  on  the  supposition  that  its  books  are 
equally  inspired  with  those  to  which  their  church  assigns  so 
lofty  a  character.  And  their  spirits  may  be  stirred  within 
them,  as  they  read  of  the  chivalrous  deeds  of  the  Maccabean 
princes,  and  even  their  tears  may  be  drawn  forth,  as  the 
Book  of  Wisdom  pours  its  elegiac  poetry  over  those  who  die 
young.  But  they  will  not  find  that  moral  probing,  that 
dissection  of  the  heart,  that  profundity  of  meaning  which 


BY    EXPERIENCE.  379 

makes  a  single  text  like  a  mine  from  which  new  treasures 
may  continually  be  dug,  those  flashes  of  truth  which  sud- 
denly issue  from  what  had  long  seemed  dark  sayings. 
These  and  the  like  evidences  that  the  living  God  is  in  the. 
book  will  be  wanting,  however  its  pages  may  be  printed 
with  heroic  story,  or  glowing  with  poetic  fire.  Even  though 
the  style  and  sentiment  may  be  similar  to  those  to  which 
they  have  been  used  in  holy  writ,  they  will  not  experience 
the  same  elevation  of  soul  as  when  they  trust  themselves  to 
the  soarings  of  Isaiah,  the  same  sweepings  of  the  chords  of 
the  heart  as  when  they  join  in  the  hymns  of  David,  nor 
the  same  echo  of  the  conscience  as  when  they  listen  to  the 
remonstrances  of  St.  Peter  or  St.  Paul.  And  what  then  is 
to  prevent  their  being  their  own  witnesses  to  the  non-in- 
spiration of  the  apocryphal,  as  well  as  to  the  inspiration  of 
the  canonical  scriptures  1  What  is  to  prevent  their  bringing 
their  own  experience  in  confirmation  of  what  had  origi- 
nally been  told  them  by  the  church,  and  thus  joining  them- 
selves to  those  who  can  say,  "  as  we  have  heard,  so  have 
we  seen,  in  the  city  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts  ?" 

Now  the  points  on  which  we  have  thus  touched,  have 
been  handled  at  great  length,  and  with  consummate  ability, 
by  modern  writers.  And  we  have  dwelt  on  them,  not  with 
any  idea  of  adding  to  the  strength  with  which  they  have 
been  asserted,  or  the  clearness  with  which  they  have  been 
illustrated  ;  but  simply  in  the  hope  of  fixing  the  attention 
of  the  younger  part  of  this  audience  on  what  is  called  the 
self-evidencing  power  of  Scripture.  With  all  our  desire 
that  they  should  be  thoroughly  masters  of  the  external  evi- 
dences of  Christianity,  we  are  unspeakably  more  anxious 
that  they  should  labor  to  possess  themselves  of  the  internal ; 
for,  in  searching  after  these,  they  must  necessarily  study  the 
Bible  itself.  If  they  will  learn  to  view  the  contents  of  Scrip- 
ture as  themselves  its  credentials,  we  shall  engage  them  in 
the  most  hopeful  of  all  studies,  the  study  of  God's  word  as 
addressing  itself  to  the  heart,  and  not  merely  to  the  head. 
For  there  may  be  an  intellectual  theology  ;  religion  may  be 
reduced  into  a  science  ;  and  the  writers  on  the  evidences. 


380  TESTIMONY    CONFIRMED 

and  the  commentators  on  the  text  of  the  Bible,  may  just  do  for 
Christianity  what  the  laborious  and  the  learned  have  done  for 
various  branches  of  natural  philosophy;  make  truths  bright 
rather  than  sharp,  clear  to  the  understanding,  but  without  hold 
on  the  affections.  And  this  is  not  the  Christianity  which  we 
wish  to  find  amongst  you,  the  Christianity  of  the  man  who 
can  defeat  a  sceptic,  and  then  lose  his  soul.  We  would  have 
you  well-read — too  well-read  you  cannot  be — in  what  has 
been  written  in  defence  of  the  faith  ;  but,  above  all,  we 
would  fasten  you  to  the  prayerful  study  of  the  sacred  volume 
itself;  this  will  lead  you  to  the  hearing  God's  voice  in  the 
Bible,  and,  until  that  is  heard,  the  best  champion  of  truth 
may  be  far  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

But  there  is  yet  a  more  obvious  application  of  the  words 
of  our  text,  one  which,  though  it  may  have  suggested  itself 
to  your  minds,  is  of  too  practical  a  kind  to  be  omitted  by  the 
preacher.  There  is  a  reference  in  the  passage  to  the  un- 
changeableness  of  God,  to  the  similarity  of  his  dealings  with 
men,  when  there  is  a  similarity  of  circumstance.  It  is  said 
of  God  by  Solomon,  that  he  "  requireth  that  which  is  past."' 
He  seeks  again  that  which  is  past,  recalling,  as  it  were,  the 
proceedings,  whether  in  judgment  or  mercy,  of  departed 
ages,  and  repeating  them  to  the  present  generation.  And 
it  is  on  this  account  that  there  is  such  value  in  the  register- 
ed experience  of  the  believers  of  other  days,  so  that  the  bio- 
graphy of  the  righteous  is  among  the  best  treasures  possess- 
ed by  a  church.  It  is,  in  one  sense  at  least,  a  vast  advantage 
to  us  that  we  live  late  in  the  world.  We  have  all  the  benefit 
of  the  spiritual  experience  of  many  centuries,  which  has 
been  bequeathed  to  us  as  a  legacy  of  more  worth  than  large 
wealth  or  far-spreading  empire.  We  have  not,  therefore,  to 
tread  a  path  in  which  we  have  had  but  few  precursors.  Far 
as  the  eye  can  reach,  the  road  we  have  to  traverse  is  crowd- 
ed with  beckoning  forms,  as  though  the  sepulchres  gave  up 
their  host  of  worthies,  that  we  might  be  animated  by  the 
view  of  the  victorious  throng.  And  this  is  an  advantage 
which  it  is  hardly  possible  to  overrate.  You  have  only  to 
add  to  this  an  acquaintance  with  the  unchangeableness  of 


BY    EXPERIENCE.  381 

God,  and  there  seems  all  that  can  be  needed  to  the  encou- 
ragement and  confidence  of  the  righteous.  The  unchangea- 
bleness  of  God  assures  ns  that  he  will  do  in  our  own  days, 
as  he  has  done  in  earlier ;  the  registered  experience  of  for- 
mer times  instructs  us  as  to  the  accuracy  with  which  he 
has  made  good  the  declarations  of  Scripture  :  and  by  com- 
bining these  two,  the  assurance  and  the  instruction,  we  gain 
a  witness,  which  nothing  should  shake,  that,  with  the  Bible 
for  our  guide,  we  shall  have  peace  for  our  present  portion^ 
unbounded  glory  for  our  future. 

There  is  here  a  new  witness  for  the  Bible,  a  witness  ac- 
cessible, to  the  meanest,  the  witness  of  happy  lives  and  tri- 
umphant deaths.  The  very  peasant  masters  and  rejoices  in 
this  evidence.  The  histories  of  good  men  find  their  way 
into  his  hamlet ;  and  even  in  the  village  church-yard  sleep 
some  whose  righteousness  will  be  long  had  in  remembrance. 
And  knowing,  as  he  does,  that  those,  whose  bright  names 
thus  hallow  the  annals  whether  of  his  country  or  his  valley, 
were  "  acceptable  to  God,  and  approved  of  men,"  through 
simply  submitting  themselves  to  the  guidance  of  Scripture  ; 
that  they  were  Bible  precepts  which  made  them  the  example 
and  blessing  of  their  fellows,  and  Bible  promises  which 
nerved  them  for  victory  over  sorrow  and  death — has  he  not 
a  noble  evidence  on  the  side  of  Scripture,  an  evidence 
against  which  the  taunts  of  scepticism  are  directed  without 
effect,  an  evidence  which  augments  with  every  piece  of 
christian  biography  that  comes  into  his  possession,  and  with 
every  instance  of  christian  consistency  that  comes  under  his 
observation  ? 

And  what  he  thus  hears  in  the  city  of  God,  acts,  on  every 
account,  as  a  stimulus  to  his  own  faith  and  stedfastness. 
The  registered  experience  of  those  who  have  gone  before, 
encourages  him  to  expect  the  same  mercies  from  the  same 
God.  He  kindles  as  he  reads  their  story.  Their  memory 
rouses  him.  He  asks  the  mantle  of  the  ascending  prophet, 
that  he  may  divide  with  it  the  waters  which  had  before 
owned  its  power.  Thus  what  he  has  heard  in  the  city  of 
his  God  confirms  his  diligence  and  animates  his  hope.     He 


382  TESTIMONY    CONFIRMED 

takes  the  experience  of  others,  and  proceeds  upon  the  sup- 
position that  it  may  be  made  his  own.  And  it  is  made 
his  own.  Through  faith  the  same  wonders  are  wrought. 
Through  prayer  the  same  mercies  are  obtained.  The  same 
promises  are  accomplished,  the  same  assistances  communi- 
cated, the  same  victories  achieved.  And  as  the  man  re- 
members how  his  spirit  glowed  at  the  mention  of  noble 
things  done  on  behalf  of  the  righteous  ;  how  the  records  of 
good  men's  lives  soothed  him,  and  cheered  him,  and  excited 
him ;  how  their  prayers  taught  him  to  be  a  suppliant,  and 
their  praises  moved  him  to  be  hopeful ;  how  they  seemed  to 
have  lived  for  his  instruction,  and  died  for  his  comfort— and 
then  as  he  feels,  how,  through  treading  the  same  path,  and 
trusting  in  the  same  Mediator,  he  has  already  obtained  a 
measure,  and  may  expect  a  yet  larger,  of  the  blessings  where- 
with they  were  blessed  of  their  God — oh,  his  language  will 
be  that  of  our  text ;  and  he  will  join,  heart  and  soul,  with 
those  who  are  confessing,  "  as  we  have  heard,  so  have  we 
seen,  in  the  city  of  our  God.*' 

There  will  be  a  yet  finer  use  of  these  words  :  they  shall 
be  woven  into  a  nobler  than  the  noblest  earthly  chant.  Are 
we  deceiving  men,  are  we  merely  sketching  ideal  pictures, 
to  whose  beauty  and  brilliancy  there  is  nothing  correspond- 
ent in  future  realities,  when  we  expatiate  on  the  glories  of 
heaven,  and  task  imagination  to  build  its  palaces,  and  por- 
tray its  inhabitants?  Yes,  in  one  sense  we  deceive  them: 
they  are  but  ideal  pictures  which  we  draw.  What  human 
pencil  can  delineate  scenes  in  which  God  manifests  his 
presence  ?  What  human  coloring  emulate  the  effulgence 
which  issues  from  his  throne  ?  But  we  deceive  them  only 
through  inability  to  rise  sufficiently  high ;  we  exhaust 
imagination,  but  not  the  thousandth  part  is  told.  They 
are  deceived,  only  if  they  think  we  tell  them  all,  if  they 
take  the  pictures  which  we  draw  as  perfect  representations 
of  the  majesty  of  the  future. 

When  we  speak  to  them  of  the  deep  and  permanent 
repose  of  heaven  ;  when  we  enlarge  on  the  manifestations 
of  Deity  ;  when  we  declare  that  Christ,    as  "  the  Minister 


by  txr KKiENcr.  283 

of  the  Sanctuary,"  will  unfold  to  his  church  the  mysteries 
which  have  perplexed  them ;  when  we  gather  together 
what  is  gorgeous,  and  precious,  and  beautiful,  in  the  visible 
creation,  and  crowd  it  into  the  imagery  wherewith  we 
delineate  the  final  home  of  the  saints  ;  when  we  take  the 
sun  from  the  firmament,  that  the  Lord  God  may  shine 
there,  and  remove  all  temples  from  the  city,  that  the 
Almighty  may  be  its  Sanctuary,  and  hush  all  human  min- 
strelsy, that  the  immense  tide  of  song  may  roll  from  thou- 
sand times  ten  thousand  voices — we  speak  only  the  words 
of  truth  and  soberness,  though  we  have  not  compassed  the 
greatness,  nor  depicted  the  loveliness,  of  the  portion  which 
awaits  the  disciples  of  Christ.  If  there  be  one  passage  of 
Scripture  which  we  may  venture  to  put  into  the  lips  of  re- 
deemed men  in  glory,  it  is  our  text ;  in  this  instance,  we 
may  be  confident  that  the  change  from  earth  to  heaven  will 
not  have  made  the  language  of  the  one  unsuited  to  the 
other.  Oh,  as  the  shining  company  take  the  circuit  of  the 
celestial  city ;  as  they  "  walk  about  Zion,  and  go  round 
about  her,"  telling  the  towers  thereof,  marking  well  her 
bulwarks,  and  considering  her  palaces  ;  who  can  doubt 
that  they  say  one  to  another,  "  as  we  have  heard,  so  have 
we  seen,  in  the  city  of  our  God?"  We  heard  that  here  "  the 
wicked  cease  from  troubling,"  and  now  we  behold  the  deep 
rich  calm.  We  heard  that  here  we  should  be  with  the  Lord, 
and  now  we  see  him  face  to  face.  We  heard  that  here  we 
should  know  even  as  we  are  known,  and  now  the  ample 
page  of  universal  truth  is  open  to  our  inspection.  We  heard 
that  here,  with  the  crown  on  the  head,  and  the  harp  in  the 
hand,  we  should  execute  the  will,  and  hymn  the  praises,  of 
our  God,  and  now  we  wear  the  diadem,  and  wake  the 
melody.  They  can  take  to  themselves  the  words  which  the 
dying  leader  Joshua  used  of  the  Israelites,  "  not  one  thing 
hath  failed  of  all  the  good  things  which  the  Lord  our  God 
spake  concerning  us ;  all  are  come  to  pass,  and  not  one 
thing  hath  failed  thereof." 

Shall  it  be  said  of  any  amongst  ourselves,  that  they  heard 
of  heaven,  but  made  no  effort  to  behold  it?     Is  there  one 


384  TESTIMONY    CONFIRMED    BY     EXPERIENCE, 

who  can  be  indifferent  to  the  announcement  of  its  glories, 
one  who  can  feel  utterly  careless  whether  he  ever  prove  for 
himself,  that  there  has  been  no  deceit,  no  exaggeration,  but 
that  it  is  indeed  a  surpassingly  fair  land  which  is  to  be 
everlastingly  the  home  of  those  who  believe  in  the  Redeemer  '!■ 
Everlastingly  the  home — for  we  must  not  overlook  the  con- 
cluding words  of  our  text,  "  God  will  establish  it  for  ever." 
The  walls  of  that  city  shall  never  decay  ;  the  lustres  of  that 
city  shall  never  grow  dim  ;  the  melodies  of  that  city  shall 
never  be  hushed.  And  is  it  of  a  city  such  as  this  that  any 
one  of  us  can  be  indifferent  whether  or  no  he  be  finally  an 
inhabitant?  We  will  not  believe  it.  The  old  and  the  young, 
the  rich  and  the  poor,  all  must  be  ready  to  bind  themselves 
by  a  solemn  vow,  that  they  will  "  seek  first  the  kingdom  of 
God,  and  his  righteousness."  It  is  not  the  voice  of  a  solitary 
and  weak  fellow-man  which  now  tells  you  of  heaven.  God 
is  summoning  you.  Angels  are  summoning  you.  The 
myriads  who  have  gone  before  are  summoning  you.  We 
are  surrounded  by  a  "  great  cloud  of  witnesses."  The 
battlements  of  the  sky  seem  thronged  with  those  who  have 
fought  the  good  fight  of  faith.  They  bend  down  from  their 
eminence,  and  bid  us  ascend,  through  the  one  Mediator, 
to  the  same  lofty  dwelling.  They  shall  not  call  in  vain. 
We  know  their  voices,  as  they  sweep  by  us  solemnly  and. 
sweetly.  And  we  think,  and  we  trust,  that  there  will  not  be 
one  of  you  who  will  leave  the  sanctuary  without  some  such 
reflection  and  prayer  as  this — I  have  heard  of  heaven,  I 
have  been  told  of  its  splendors  and  of  its  happiness  ;  grant, 
gracious  and  eternal  Father,  that  I  fail  not  at  last  to  be  asso- 
ciated with  those  who  shall  rejoicingly  exclaim,  "  as  we 
have  heard,  so  have  we  seen,  in  the  city  of  the  Lord  of 
Hosts." 


SERMON  IV 


THE  GENERAL  RESURRECTION  AND  JUDGMENT. 


Marvel  not  at  this ;  for  the  hour  is  coming  in  which  all  that  are  in  the 
graves  shall  hear  his  voice,  and  shall  come  forth  :  they  that  have  done 
good  unto  the  resurrection  of  life,  and  they  that  have  done  evil  unto  the 
resurrection  of  damnation." — St.  John,  5  :  28,  29. 


You  will  at  once  perceive  that  these  words  of  our  Savior 
are  not  to  be  understood  without  a  reference  to  those  by 
which  they  are  preceded.  They  show  that  surprise  was 
both  felt  and  expressed  at  something  which  he  had  just  said  ; 
for  they  are  a  direction  to  his  audience  not  to  marvel,  or 
wonder,  at  what  he  had  affirmed,  seeing  that  he  had  to  state 
what  was  yet  more  astonishing.  If  you  examine  the  con- 
text of  the  passage,  you  will  find  that  our  Lord  had  been 
speaking  of  the  effects  which  should  follow  upon  belief  of 
his  word,  and  that  he  had  used  language  in  regard  of  those 
effects,  which  borrowed  its  imagery  from  death  and  a  resur- 
rection. This  surprised  and  displeased  his  hearers.  They 
could  not  understand  how  the  word  of  Christ  could  possess 
such  a  power  as  he  had  claimed  ;  and  they  perhaps  even 
doubted  whether  the  new  creation  of  which  he  spake,  the 
quickening  of  souls  "  dead  in  trespasses  and  sins,"  ever  took 
place. 

It  was  to  meet  these  feelings,  which  he  perceived  stirring 
in  their  minds,  that  Christ  proceeded  to  address  them  in  the 
words  of  our  text.  "  Marvel  not  at  this."  As  though  he  had 
49 


385  THE    GENERAL    RESURRECTION 

said,  you  are  staggered  at  what  I  have  declared,  fancying  it 
incredible,  or,  at  least,  far  beyond  my  power.  But  I  have  a 
yet  more  wonderful  thing  of  which  to  tell  you,  a  thing  that 
shall  be  done  by  myself,  though  requiring  still  greater  might. 
You  are  amazed  that  I  should  speak  of  raising  those  who 
are  morally  dead  ;  but  "  marvel  not  at  this  :  for  the  hour  is 
coming,  in  which  all  that  are  in  the  graves  shall  hear  my 
voice." 

This  appears  to  us  the  true  account  of  our  Lord's  reason- 
ing. The  resurrection  of  the  body,  the  calling  from  the 
graves  those  who  had  long  slumbered  therein,  is  represented 
as  a  more  wonderful  thing  than  what  had  just  excited  the 
amazement  of  the  Jews.  And  thus  the  passage  sets,  as  we 
think,  the  resurrection  of  the  body  under  a  most  imposing 
point  of  view,  making  it  the  great  prodigy  in  God's  dealings 
with  our  race.  That  there  is  nothing  else  to  marvel  at,  in 
comparison  of  the  resurrection  of  the  dead— this  seems  to  us 
the  assertion  of  Christ,  and  such  assertion  demands  a  most 
careful  consideration.  Of  course,  independently  on  this  as- 
sertion, there  is  a  great  deal  in  the  passage  which  affords 
material  for  profitable  meditation,  seeing  that  the  whole  bu- 
siness of  the  last  audit  is  summarily,  but  strikingly,  de- 
scribed. The  remarkable  feature,  however,  of  the  text  is 
undoubtedly  that  of  its  making  the  resurrection  of  the  body 
the  first  of  all  marvels ;  and  it  is,  therefore,  to  the  illustration 
of  this  that  we  shall  give  our  chief  care,  though  not  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  more  general  truths  affirmed  by  our  Lord. 

Now  we  are  accustomed  to  think,  and,  doubtless,  with 
justice,  that  there  is  an  affinity  between  God  and  our  souls, 
but  nothing  of  the  kind  between  God  and  our  bodies.  We 
do  not  indeed  presume  to  speak  of  the  human  soul,  any 
more  than  of  the  human  body,  as  having  congeniality,  or 
sameness  of  nature,  with  the  great  first  cause,  the  self-ex- 
istent Deity.  But  we  may  venture  to  declare  that  all  the  se- 
paration which  there  is  between  the  soul  and  the  body,  is 
an  advance  towards  the  nature  of  God,  so  that  the  soul, 
inasmuch  as  it  is  spiritual,  far  more  nearly  resembles  the 
divine  Being  than  the  body,  inasmuch  as  it  is  material. 


AND     JUDGMENT.  387 

And  when  we  reacli  this  conclusion,  we  are  at  a  point 
from  which  to  view  with  great  amazement  the  resurrection 
of  the  body.  So  long  as  a  divine  interference  is  limited  to 
the  soul,  we  may  be  said  to  be  prepared,  at  least  in  a  degree, 
for  whatever  can  be  told  us  of  its  greatness  and  disinte- 
restedness. We  attach  a  dignity  to  the  soul,  which,  though 
it  could  not,  after  there  had  been  sin.  establish  any  claim  to 
the  succors  of  God,  seems  to  make  it,  if  not  to  be  expected, 
yet  not  to  be  wondered  at,  that  it  was  not  abandoned  to 
degradation  and  ruin.  The  soul  is  so  much  more  nearly  of 
the  same  nature  with  God  than  the  body,  that  a  spiritual  re- 
surrection appears  a  thousand-fold  more  likely  than  a  cor- 
poreal. And  you  are  to  observe  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  to  make  it  clear  to  us,  that,  if  the  soul 
were  redeemed,  so  also  must  be  the  body.  The  ordinary 
current  of  thought  and  feeling  may  almost  be  said  to  be 
against  the  redemption  of  the  body.  The  body  is  felt  to  be 
an  incumbrance  to  the  soul,  hindering  it  in  its  noblest  occu- 
pations, and  contributing  nothing  to  its  most  elevated  plea- 
sures. So  far  from  the  soul  being  incapable  of  happiness,  if 
detached  from  the  body,  it  is  actually  its  union  with  the 
body,  which,  to  all  appearance,  detains  it  from  happiness ; 
so  that,  in  its  finest  and  loftiest  musings,  its  exclamation 
often  is,  "  O  that  I  had  wings  like  a  dove,  for  then  would  I 
flee  away  and  be  at  rest."  Even  now  the  soul  is  often  able 
to  rise  above  the  body,  to  detach  itself,  for  a  while,  from 
matter,  and  to  soar  into  regions  which  it  feels  to  be  more  its 
home  than  this  earth.  And  when  compelled  to  return  from 
so  splendid  an  excursion,  there  is  a  sentiment  of  regret  that 
it  must  still  tabernacle  in  flesh  ;  and  it  is  conscious  of  long- 
ing for  a  day  when  it  may  finally  abandon  its  perishable 
dwelling. 

Thus  there  is  nothing  of  a  felt  necessity  for  the  re-union 
of  the  soul  to  the  body,  to  guide  us  in  expecting  the  cor- 
poreal as  well  as  the  spiritual  resurrection.  We  might 
almost  affirm  that  the  feeling  is  all  the  other  way.  And 
though,  through  some  fine  workings  of  reason,  or,  through 
attention  to  lingering  traces  of  patriarchal  religion,  men, 


388  THE  GENERAL  RESURRECTION 

destitute  of  the  light  of  revelation,  have  reached  a  persua- 
sion of  the  soul's  immortality,  never  have  they  formed  even 
a  conjecture  of  the  body's  resurrection.  They  have  imaged 
to  themselves  the  spirit,  which  they  felt  burning  and  beat- 
ing within  them,  emancipated  from  thraldom,  and  admitted 
into  a  new  and  eternal  estate.  Bat  they  have  consigned  the 
body  to  the  interminable  dishonors  of  the  grave  ;  and  never, 
in  the  boldest  imaginings,  whether  of  their  philosophy  or 
their  poetry,  have  they  thrown  life  into  the  ashes  of  the 
sepulchre.  It  is  almost  the  voice  of  nature,  that  the  soul 
survives  death  :  the  soul  gives  its  own  testimony,  and  often 
so  impressively,  that  a  man  could  as  easily  doubt  his  present 
as  his  future  existence.  But  there  is  no  such  voice  put  forth 
in  regard  of  the  body  :  no  solemn  and  mysterious  whisper- 
ings are  heard  from  its  resting-place,  the  echo  of  a  truth 
which  seems  syllabled  within  us,  that  bone  shall  come  again 
to  bone,  and  sinews  bind  them,  and  skin  cover  them,  and 
breath  stir  them. 

And  we  may  safely  argue,  that,  if  the  immortality  of  the 
soul  be  an  article  of  natural  theology,  but  the  resurrection  of 
the  body  were  never  even  thought  of  by  the  most  profound 
of  its  disciples,  there  can  be  no  feeling  in  man  that  the  mat- 
ter, as  well  as  the  spirit,  of  which  he  is  composed,  must  re- 
appear in  another  state  of  being,  in  order  either  to  the  possi- 
bility or  the  felicity  of  his  existence.  So  that — for  this  is  the 
point  to  which  our  remarks  tend — we  may  declare  of  the 
resurrection  of  the  body,  that  it  is  altogether  an  unexpected 
fact,  one  which  no  exercise  of  reason  could  have  led  us  to 
conjecture,  and  for  which  there  is  not  even  that  natural 
longing  which  might  be  interpreted  into  an  argument  of  its 
probability.  It  is  not  then  when  God  interposes  on  behalf 
of  the  soul,  it  is  when  he  interposes  on  behalf  of  the  body, 
that  the  great  cause  is  given  for  amazement.  A  spark,  one 
might  almost  call  it,  of  himself,  an  emanation  from  his  own 
immortality,  mighty  in  its  powers,  mysterious  in  its  wander- 
ings, sublime  in  its  anticipations,  we  scarcely  wonder  that  a 
spiritual  thing  like  the  soul  should  engage  the  carefulness 
of  its  Maker,  and  that,  if  it  sully  its  brightness,  and  mar  its 


AND    JUDGMENT.  389 

strength,  he  should  graciously  provide  for  its  final  recovery. 
But  the  body — matter,  which  is  man's  link  of  association 
with  the  lowest  of  the  brutes,  and  which  natural  and  reveal- 
ed theology  are  alike  earnest  in  removing  to  the  farthest 
possible  distance  from  the  divine  nature — the  body,  whose 
members  are  "  the  instruments  of  unrighteousness,"  whose 
wants  make  our  feebleness,  whose  lusts  are  our  tempters, 
whose  infirmities  our  torment — that  this  ignoble  and  decay- 
ing thing  should  be  cared  for  by  God,  who  is  ineffably  more 
spiritual  than  spirit,  so  that  he  designs  its  re-appearance  in 
his  own  immediate  presence,  what  is  comparable  in  its  won- 
dermlness  to  this?  Prodigy  of  prodigies,  that  this  corrupti- 
ble should  put  on  incorruption,  this  mortal  immortality. 
And  scribes  and  Pharisees  might  have  listened  with  amaze- 
ment, and  even  with  incredulity,  as  the  Lord  our  Redeemer 
affirmed  the  effects  which  would  be  wrought  on  the  soul 
through  the  doctrines  and  deeds  of  his  mission.  But  he  had 
stranger  things  to  tell ;  for  he  had  to  speak  of  the  body  as 
well  as  of  the  soul,  rising  from  its  ruins,  and  gloriously  re- 
constructed. Yes,  observing  how  his  hearers  were  surprised, 
because  he  had  spoken  of  the  spiritually  dead  as  quickened 
by  his  word,  he  might  well  say  unto  them,  "  marvel  not  at 
this,"  and  give  as  his  reason,  "  for  the  hour  is  coming,  in 
which  all  that  are  in  the  graves  shall  hear  my  voice." 

Now,  throughout  this  examination  of  the  truth,  that  the 
resurrection  of  the  body  furnishes,  in  an  extraordinary  de- 
gree, cause  of  wonder  and  surprise,  we  have  made  no  refer- 
ence to  the  display  of  divine  power  which  this  resurrection 
must  present.  We  have  simply  enlarged  on  what  may  be 
called  the  unexpectedness  of  the  event,  proving  this  unex- 
pectedness from  the  inferiority  of  matter,  its  utter  want  of 
affinity  to  Deity,  and  the  feelings  of  even  man  himself  in 
regard  to  its  detracting  from  his  dignity  and  happiness. 

But  we  do  not  know,  that,  in  the  whole  range  of  things 
effected  by  God,  there  is  aught  so  surprising,  regard  being 
had  only  to  the  power  displayed,  as  the  resurrection  of  the 
body.  If  you  will  ponder,  for  a  few  moments,  the  facts  of  a 
resurrection,  you  will  probably  allow  that  the  power  which 


390  THE    GENERAL    RESURRECTION 

must  be  exerted  in  order  to  the  final  reconstruction  of  every 
man's  body,  is  more  signal  than  that  displayed  in  any 
spiritual  renovation,  or  in  any  of  those  divine  operations 
which  we  are  able  to  trace  in  the  visible  universe.  You  are 
just  to  think  that  this  framework  of  flesh,  in  which  my  soul 
is  now  enclosed,  will  be  reduced  at  death  to  the  dust  from 
which  it  was  taken.  I  cannot  tell  where  or  what  will  be  my 
sepulchre — whether  I  shall  sleep  in  one  of  the  quiet  church- 
yards of  my  own  land,  or  be  exposed  on  some  foreign  shore, 
or  fall  a  prey  to  the  beasts  of  the  desert,  or  seek  a  tomb  in 
the  depths  of  the  unfathomable  waters.  But  an  irreversable 
sentence  has  gone  forth — "  dust  thou  art,  and  unto  dust 
thou  shalt  return" — and  assuredly,  ere  many  years,  and  per- 
haps even  ere  many  days  have  elapsed,  must  my  "  earthly 
house  of  this  tabernacle  be  dissolved,"  rafter  from  rafter, 
beam  from  beam,  and  the  particles,  of  which  it  has  been 
curiously  compounded,  be  separated  from  each  other,  and 
perhaps  scattered  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven.  And  who 
will  pretend  to  trace  the  wanderings  of  these  particles,  into 
what  other  substances  they  may  enter,  of  what  other  bodies 
they  may  form  part  so  as  to  appear  and  disappear  many  times 
in  living  shape  before  the  dawn  of  the  great  Easter  of  the 
universe  ?  There  is  manifestly  the  most  thorough  possibility, 
that  the  elements  of  which  my  body  is  composed,  may  have 
belonged  to  the  bone  and  flesh  of  successive  generations ; 
and  that,  when  I  shall  have  passed  away  and  be  forgotten, 
they  will  be  again  wrought  into  the  structure  of  animated 
beings. 

And  when  you  think  that  my  body,  at  the  resurrection, 
must  have  at  least  so  much  of  its  original  matter,  as  shall  be 
necessary  for  the  preservation  of  identity,  for  the  making  me 
know  and  feel  myself  the  very  same  being  who  sinned,  and 
suffered,  and  was  disciplined  on  earth,  you  must  allow  that 
nothing  short  of  infinite  knowledge  and  power  could  prevail 
to  the  watching,  and  disentangling,  and  keeping  duly  se- 
parate, whatever  is  to  be  again  builded  into  a  habitation  for 
my  spirit,  so  that  it  may  be  brought  together  from  the  four 
ends  of  the  earth,  detached  from  other  creatures,  or  extracted 


AND    JUDGMENT.  391 

from  other  substances.  This  would  be  indeed  a  wonderful 
thing-,  if  it  were  true  of  none  but  myself,  if  it  were  only  in 
my  solitary  case  that  a  certain  portion  of  matter  had  thus  to 
be  watched,  kept  distinct  though  mingled,  and  appropriated 
to  myself  whilst  belonging  to  others.  But  try  to  suppose  the 
same  holding  good  of  every  human  being,  of  Adam,  and 
each  member  of  his  countless  posterity,  and  see  whether  the 
resurrection  will  not  utterly  confound  and  overburden  the 
mind.  To  every  individual  in  the  interminable  throng  shall 
his  own  body  be  given,  a  body  so  literally  his  own,  that  it 
shall  be  made  up,  to  at  least  a  certain  extent,  of  the  matter 
which  composed  it  whilst  he  dwelt  on  this  earth.  And  yet 
this  matter  may  have  passed  through  innumerable  changes. 
It  may  have  circulated  through  the  living  tribes  of  many 
generations ;  or  it  may  have  been  waving-  in  the  trees  of  the 
forest ;  or  it  may  have  floated  on  the  wide  waters  of  the 
deep.  But  there  has  been  an  eye  upon  it  in  all  its  appropri- 
ations, and  in  all  its  transformations  ;  so  that,  just  as  though 
it  had  been  indelibly  stamped,  from  the  first,  with  the  name 
of  the  human  being  to  whom  it  should  finally  belong,  it  has 
been  unerringly  reserved  for  the  great  day  of  resurrection. 
Thus  myriads  upon  myriads  of  atoms — for  you  may  count 
up  till  imagination  is  wearied,  and  then  reckon  that  you 
have  but  one  unit  of  the  still  inapproachable  sum — myriads 
upon  myriads  of  atoms,  the  dust  of  kingdoms,  the  ashes  of 
all  that  have  lived,  are  perpetually  jostled,  and  mingled,  and 
separated,  and  animated,  and  swept  away,  and  reproduced, 
and,  nevertheless,  not  a  solitary  particle  but  holds  itself  ready. 
at  the  sound  of  the  last  trump,  to  combine  itself  with  a  mul- 
titude of  others,  in  a  human  body  in  which  they  once  met 
perhaps  a  thousand  years  before. 

We  frankly  own  that  this  appears  to  us  among  the  most 
inscrutable  of  wonders.  That  God  should  have  produced 
countless  worlds,  and  that  he  should  marshal  all  their 
motions,  as  they  walk  the  immensity  of  his  empire — it  is 
an  amazing  contemplation :  and  the  mind  cannot  compass 
the  greatness  of  a  power  which  had  only  to  speak  and  it 
was  done,  and  which  hath  ever  since  upheld  its  own  magni- 


392  THE    GENERAL    RESURRECTION 

ficent  creation,  in  all  the  grandeur  of  its  structures,  and  in 
all  the  harmony  of  its  relations.  But,  with  all  its  majesty, 
there  is  a  simplicity  in  the  mechanism  of  systems  and  con- 
stellations :  every  star  has  its  place  and  its  orbit ;  and  we  see 
no  traces  of  a  complication,  or  confusion,  which  might  ren- 
der necessary  unwearied  and  infinite  watchfulness,  in  order 
to  the  preventing  universal  disorder.  And  it  is  again  a  sur- 
prising truth,  that  the  Spirit  of  God  should  act  on  the  hu- 
man soul  ;  that,  secretly  and  silently,  it  should  renovate  its 
decayed  powers,  refine  its  affections,  and  awaken  the  dormant 
immortality.  Yet  even  here  we  may  speak  of  simplicity — 
each  soul,  like  each  star,  has  its  own  sphere  of  motion  ;  each 
is  distinct  from  each  ;  and  none  has  ever  to  be  dissolved,  and 
mingled,  like  the  body,  with  the  elements  of  a  million  others. 
It  still  then  remains  a  kind  of  marvel  amongst  marvels, 
that  there  hath  not.  died  the  man  who  shall  not  live  again, 
live  again  in  that  identical  body  which  his  spirit  abandoned 
when  summoned  back  to  God.  And  upon  this  account, 
upon  account  of  the  apparently  vaster  power  displayed  in  a 
resurrection,  may  we  suppose  that  Christ  bade  his  hearers 
withhold  their  amazement  at  what  he  had  advanced.  Yes, 
and  we  feel  that  he  might  have  spoken  of  every  other  por- 
tion of  God's  dealings  with  our  race,  and,  without  depre- 
cating the  wonderfulness  of  other  things,  have  declared,  at 
each  step,  that  he  had  stranger  truths  in  store.  He  might 
have  spoken  of  creation ;  and,  whilst  an  audience  were  con- 
founded at  the  story  of  animate  and  inanimate  things  start- 
ing suddenly  into  being,  he  might  have  added,  "  marvel 
not  at  this."  He  might  have  spoken,  as  he  did  speak,  of  a 
spiritual  regeneration  pervading  large  masses  of  the  family 
of  man ;  and,  whilst  those  who  heard  him  were  looking 
surprised  and  incredulous,  he  might  have  added,  as  he  did 
add,  "marvel  not  at  this."  For  he  had  to  speak  of  a  rifling 
of  the  sepulchres,  of  the  re-animating  the  dust  of  buried  ge- 
nerations. And  this  was  to  speak  of  earth,  and  sea,  and  air, 
resolving  themselves  suddenly  into  the  flesh  and  sinew  of 
human-kind.  This  was  to  speak  of  countless  particles,  some 
from  the  east  and   others  from  the  west,  these  from  the 


AND    JUDGMENT.  393 

north  and  those  from  the  south,  moved  by  mysterious  im- 
pulse, and  combining  into  the  limbs  of  patriarchs,  and  pro- 
phets, and  priests,  and  kings,  and  people.  This  was  to  speak 
of  the  re-appearance  of  every  human  being  that  ever  moved 
on  the  face  of  the  earth — the  old  man  who  sunk  beneath  the 
burden  of  years,  and  the  young  man  who  perished  in  his 
prime,  and  the  infant  who  just  opened  his  eyes  on  a  sinful 
and  sad  world,  and  then  closed  them  as  though  terrified — 
all  reproduced,  though  all  had  been  dispersed  like  chaff 
before  the  hurricane,  all  receiving  their  original  elements, 
though  those  elements  had  been  the  play-things  of  the 
winds,  and  the  fuel  for  the  flames,  and  the  foam  upon  the 
waters.  And  if  this  were  indeed  the  speaking  of  a  general 
resurrection,  oh,  then  our  Lord  might  have  already  been 
affirming  what  was  wonderful ;  but,  whatsoever  that  had 
been,  he  might  have  gone  on  to  repress  the  astonishment 
of  his  hearers,  saying  unto  them,  "  marvel  not  at  this," 
and  giving  as  his  reason,  "  for  the  hour  is  coming,  in  which 
all  that  are  in  the  graves  shall  hear  my  voice." 

Now  we  have  probably  advanced  enough  in  explanation 
of  what  perhaps  at  first  seems  hardly  to  have  been  expected, 
namely,  that  our  Lord  should  represent  other  wonders,  even 
that  of  the  spiritually  passing  from  death  unto  life,  as  not 
to  be  wondered  at,  in  comparison  with  the  resurrection  of 
the  body.  We  proceed,  therefore,  to  the  examining  what 
Christ  asserts  in  regard  of  those  sublime  transactions  which 
will  be  associated  with  this  surpassingly  strange  event. 

"  The  hour  is  coming."  More  than  eighteen  hundred 
years  have  elapsed,  since  he  who  spake  as  "  never  man 
spake,"  and  who  could  utter  nothing  but  truth,  made  this 
assertion,  an  assertion  which  implied  that  the  hour  was  at 
hand.  But  the  dead  are  yet  in  their  graves  ;  no  vivifying 
voice  has  been  heard  in  the  sepulchres.  We  know  however 
that  "  a  thousand  years  are  with  the  Lord  as  one  day,  and 
one  day  as  a  thousand  years."  We  count  it  not  therefore 
strange  that  the  predicted  hour,  the  hour  so  full  of  mystery 
and  might,  has  not  yet  arrived.  But  it  must  come ;  it  may 
not  perhaps  be  distant ;  and  there  may  be  some  of  us,  for 
50 


394  THE    GENERAL    RESURRECTION 

aught  we  can  tell,  who  shall  be  alive  on  the  earth  when  the 
voice  issues  forth,  the  voice  which  shall  be  echoed  from  the 
sea,  and  the  city,  and  the  mountain,  and  the  desert,  all  crea- 
tion hearkening,  and  all  that  hath  ever  lived  simultaneously 
responding.  But  whether  we  be  of  the  quick  or  of  the  dead, 
on  the  morning  of  the  resurrection,  we  must  hear  the  voice, 
and  join  ourselves  to  the  swarming  throng  which  presses 
forward  to  judgment.  And  whose  is  the  voice  that  is  thus 
irresistible,  which  is  heard  even  in  the  graves  of  the  earth , 
and  in  the  caverns  of  the  deep,  and  which  is  heard  only  to 
be  obeyed  1  Know  ye  not  that  voice  1  Ye  have  heard  it  be- 
fore. It  is  the  voice  which  said,  "  Come  unto  me,  all  ye 
that  are  weary  and  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest." 
It  is  the  voice  which  prayed  on  behalf  of  murderers,  ,s  Fa- 
ther, forgive  them,  they  know  not  what  they  do."  It  is  the 
voice  which  said,  "  It  is  finished,"  pronouncing  the  com- 
pletion of  the  work  of  human  redemption.  Yes,  ye  have 
heard  that  voice  before.  Ye  have  heard  it  in  the  ministra- 
tions of  the  Gospel.  It  hath  called  to  you,  it  hath  pleaded 
with  you.  And  those  who  have  listened  to  it  in  life,  and 
who  have  obeyed  it  when  it  summoned  them  to  take  up  the 
cross,  to  them  it  will  be  a  mighty  comfort,  that,  in  the  voice 
which  is  shaking  the  universe,  and  wakening  the  dead, 
they  recognize  the  tones  of  Him  who  could  be  "  touched 
with  a  feeling  of  their  infirmities." 

For  it  is,  we  think,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  the  ar- 
rangements which  characterize  the  Gospel,  that  the  offices 
of  Redeemer  and  Judge  meet  in  the  same  person,  and  that 
person  divine.  We  call  it  a  beautiful  arrangement,  because 
securing  for  us  tenderness  as  well  as  equity,  the  sympathies 
of  a  friend,  as  well  as  the  disinterestedness  of  a  most  right- 
eous arbiter.  Had  the  judge  been  only  man,  the  imperfec- 
tion of  his  nature  would  have  made  us  expect  much  of  er- 
ror in  his  verdicts.  Had  he  been  only  God,  the  distance  be- 
tween him  and  us  would  have  made  us  fear  it  impossible, 
that,  in  determining  our  lot,  he  would  take  into  account  our 
feebleness  and  trials.  But  in  the  person  of  Christ  there  is 
that  marvellous  combination  which  we  seek  in  the  Judge  of 


AND    JUDGMENT.  395 

the  whole  human  race.  He  is  Clod,  and,  therefore,  must  he 
know  every  particular  of  character.  But  he  is  also  man, 
and,  therefore,  can  he  put  himself  into  the  position  of  those 
who  are  brought  to  his  bar.  And  because  the  Judge  is  thus 
the  Mediator,  the  judgment-seat  can  be  approached  with 
confidence  and  gladness.  The  believer  in  Christ,  who 
hearkened  to  the  suggestions  of  God's  Spirit,  and  brake  away 
from  the  trammels  of  sin,  shall  know  the  Son  of  man,  as  he 
comes  down  in  the  magnificent  sternness  of  celestial  autho- 
rity. And  we  say  not  that  it  shall  be  altogether  without 
dread,  or  apprehension,  that  the  righteous,  starting  from  the 
sleep  of  death,  shall  hear  the  deepening  roll  of  the  archan- 
gel's summons,  and  behold  the  terrific  pomp  of  heavenly 
judicature.  But  we  are  certain  that  they  will  be  assured 
and  comforted,  as  they  gaze  upon  their  Judge,  and  recog- 
nize their  surety.  Words  such  as  these  will  occur  to  them, 
"  God  hath  appointed  a  day  in  the  which  he  will  judge  the 
world  in  righteousness  by  that  man  whom  he  hath  ordain- 
ed." "  By  that  man."  The  man  who  "  hath  borne  our 
griefs,  and  carried  our  sorrows."  The  man  who  uttered  the 
pathetic  words,  "  O  Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  how  often  would 
I  have  gathered  thy  children  together."  The  man  who  was 
"  delivered  for  our  offences,  and  raised  again  for  our  justifi- 
cation." The  man  who  sat  in  weariness  by  the  well  of  Sa- 
maria ;  the  man  who  wept  in  anguish  at  the  grave  of  Laza- 
rus ;  the  man  who  compassionated  the  weakness  of  his  slum- 
bering disciples  ;  the  man  whose  "  sweat  was  as  it  were 
great  drops  of  blood,"  and  who  submitted  to  be  scourged,  and 
buffeted,  and  crucified,  "  for  us  men,  and  for  our  salvation." 
Yes,  this  is  the  very  being  who  is  to  gather  the  nations  before 
him,  and  determine  the  everlasting  condition  of  each  indivi- 
dual. And  though  we  dare  not  attempt  to  define  the  motions 
of  those  most  assured  of  deliverance,  when  standing,  in  their 
resurrection-bodies,  on  the  earth,  as  it  heaves  with  strange 
convulsions,  and  looking  on  a  firmament  lined  with  ten 
thousand  times  ten  thousand  angels,  and  beholding  a  throne 
of  fire  and  cloud,  such  as  was  never  piled  for  mortal  sove- 
reignty, and  hearing  sounds  of  which  even  imagination  can- 


396  THE    GENERAL    RESURRECTION 

not  catch  the  echo — yet  is  it  enough  to  assure  us  that  they 
will  be  full  of  hope  and  of  gladness,  to  tell  us  that  he  who 
will  speak  to  them  is  he  who  once  died  for  them — Oh,  there 
will  be  peace  to  the  righteous,  when  "  the  heavens  shall  be 
rolled  together  as  a  scroll,"  if  it  be  Christ  who  saith,  "  the 
hour  is  coming,  in  which  all  that  are  in  the  graves  shall 
hear  my  voice."' 

But  with  what  feelings  will  those  hear  the  voice,  of  whom 
the  Savior  may  affirm,  "  I  have  called,  and  ye  refused  ;  ye 
have  set  at  naught  all  my  counsel,  and  would  none  of  my 
reproof?"  They  too  shall  know  the  voice  ;  and  it  shall  be 
to  them  as  the  voice  of  despised  mercy,  the  voice  of  slight- 
ed love.  They  shall  be  more  startled,  and  more  pierced, 
and  more  lacerated,  by  that  voice,  than  if  it  had  never  be- 
fore been  heard,  or  if  its  tones  were  not  remembered.  The 
sound  of  that  voice  will  at  once  waken  the  memory  of  warn- 
ings that  have  been  neglected,  invitations  refused,  privileges 
unimproved.  It  will  be  painfully  eloquent  of  all  that  was 
vainly  done  to  win  them  to  repentance,  and  therefore  terri- 
bly reproachful,  ominous  of  a  doom  which  it  is  now  too  late 
to  avert.  They  would  have  more  hope,  they  would  be  less 
beaten  down  by  a  consciousness  that  they  were  about  to  en- 
ter on  everlasting  misery,  if  a  strange  voice  had  summoned 
them  from  the  tomb,  a  voice  as  of  many  thunderings,  a  voice 
that  had  never  spoken  tenderly  and  plaintively,  never  utter- 
ed the  earnest  beseechings,  the  touching  entreaties  of  a 
friend,  a  brother,  a  Redeemer.  Any  voice  rather  than  this 
voice.  None  could  be  so  dirge-like,  so  full  of  condemnation, 
so  burdened  with  malediction,  as  that  which  had  often  said, 
"  Turn  ye,  turn  ye,  for  why  will  ye  die  ?" 

But  this  is  the  voice  ;  and  when  this  voice  is  heard,  "  all 
that  are  in  the  graves  shall  come  forth."  And  under  how 
many  divisions  shall  the  swarming  myriads  be  arranged  ? 
They  have  had  very  different  opportunities  and  means,  and 
you  might  have  expected  them  to  be  separated  into  great 
variety  of  classes.  But  we  read  of  only  one  division,  of  only 
two  classes.  "  They  that  have  done  good  unto  the  resurrec- 
tion of  life,  and  they  that  have  done  evil  unto  the  resurrection 


AND    JUDGMENT.  397 

of  damnation."  There  is  not,  you  observe,  any  thing  interme- 
diate. All  rise,  so  that  there  is  no  annihilation  ;  all  rise,  either 
to  be  unspeakably  happy,  or  unspeakably  miserable,  for  there 
are  but  two  resurrections.  We  may  indeed  be  sure  that  both 
heaven  and  hell  will  present  recompenses  suited  to  all  varie- 
ties of  character,  and  that  in  the  allotments  of  both  there  will 
be  a  graduated  scale.  But  let  it  never,  on  this  account,  be  sup- 
posed that  there  may  be  a  happiness  so  imperfect,  and  a 
misery  so  inconsiderable,  that  there  shall  be  but  little  final 
difference  between  some  who  are  acquitted,  and  others  who 
are  condemned.  "  Between  us  and  you  there  is  a  great  gulf 
fixed/'  The  last  admitted,  and  the  first  excluded,  never  let 
us  think  that  these  two  classes  approach  so  nearly  to  equali- 
ty, that  it  may  be  comparatively  unimportant  with  which 
we  are  ranked.  Heaven  cannot  dwindle  away  into  hell,  and 
hell  cannot  be  softened  away  into  heaven.  Happiness  or 
misery — one  or  other  of  these  must  be  the  portion  of  every 
man  ;  and  whilst  we  freely  confess  that  happiness  and  misery 
may  admit  of  almost  countless  degrees,  and  that  thus  there 
may  be  room  for  vast  variety  of  retributions,  we  contend 
that  between  the  two  there  must  be  an  untraveled  separa- 
tion :  the  happiness,  or  the  misery  of  one  may  be  unspeaka- 
bly less  than  that  of  another ;  but  the  least  happy,  and  the 
least  miserable,  who  shall  tell  us  how  much  space  there  is 
between  these  for  the  agony  and  remorse  of  a  storm-tossed 
spirit? 

Observe  then  that  it  must  be  either  of  a  "  resurrection  of 
life,"  or  of  a  "  resurrection  of  damnation,"  that  each  amongst 
us  will  be  finally  partaker.  And  it  is  to  depend  on  our 
works,  which  of  the  two  shall  be  our  resurrection.  "They 
that  have  done  good,"  and  "they  that  have  done  evil,"  are 
our  Lord's  descriptions  of  the  respective  classes.  Works  are 
given  as  the  alone  criterion  by  which  we  shall  be  judged. 
And  this  interferes  not  with  the  great  doctrine  of  justifica- 
tion by  faith,  because  good  works  spring  from  faith,  and  are 
both  its  fruits  and  its  evidence  ;  whilst,  by  making  works 
the  test,  a  ground  is  afforded  for  the  judgment  of  those  to 
whom  Christ  has  not  been  preached,  as  well  as  of  those  who 


398  THE    GENERAL    RESURRECTION 

have  been  invited  to  the  believing  on  his  name.  The  whole 
human  family  may  be  brought  to  the  same  bar,  seeing  that 
the  only  thing  to  be  decided,  is,  whether  they  have  done 
good,  or  whether  they  have  done  evil. 

And  what  say  you  to  all  this  ?  If  we  could  escape  the 
judgment,  or  if  we  could  bribe  the  Judge ;  if  we  had  the 
bone  of  iron,  and  the  sinew  of  brass,  and  the  flesh  of  marble, 
so  that  we  might  defy  the  fire  and  the  worm,  why,  then  we 
might  eat  and  drink,  and  amass  gold,  and  gratify  lust.  But 
the  judgment  is  not  to  be  escaped — the  very  dead  are  to  hear 
the  voice,  and  who  then  can  hide  himself?  And  the  Judge 
is  not  to  be  bribed  ;  it  is  the  eternal  God  himself,  whose  are 
the  worlds,  and  all  which  they  contain.  And  we  are  sensi- 
tive beings,  beings  with  vast  capacities  for  wretchedness, 
presenting  unnumbered  inlets  to  a  ministry  of  vengeance — 
shall  we  then,  in  spite  of  all  this,  persist  in  neglecting  the 
great  salvation  ? 

We  address  ourselves  now  especially  to  our  younger 
brethren,  desiring  to  conclude  the  discourses  of  the  month 
with  a  word  of  exhortation  to  those  on  whom  "  the  dew  of 
their  youth  "  is  still  freshly  resting.  We  have  set  before  you 
the  resurrection  of  life,  and  the  resurrection  of  damnation  ; 
and  we  now  tell  you  that  you  have  your  fate  in  your  own 
keeping,  and  that  there  is  no  election  but  his  own  through 
which  any  one  of  you  can  perish.  We  speak  to  you  as  free, 
accountable  beings,  each  of  whom  is  so  circumstanced  and 
assisted  that  he  may,  if  he  will,  gain  heaven  through  the 
merits  of  Christ.  The  question  therefore  is,  whether  you 
will  act  as  candidates  for  eternity,  or  live  as  those  who  know 
nothing  of  the  great  end  of  their  creation.  Born  for  immor- 
tality, destined  to  equality  with  angels,  and  entreated  to 
"  work  out  your  salvation  with  fear  and  trembling,"  will  ye 
degrade  yourselves  to  the  level  of  the  brute,  and  lose  those 
souls  for  which  Christ  died?  It  is  a  question  which  each 
must  answer  for  himself.  Each  is  free  to  obey,  or  flee,  youth- 
ful lusts,  to  study,  or  neglect,  God's  word,  to  live  without 
prayer,  or  to  be  earnest  in  supplication.  There  is  no  com- 
pulsion on  any  one  of  you  to  be  vicious  ;  and,  be  well  as- 


AND    JUDGMENT,  399 

sured,  there  will  be  no  compulsion  on  any  one  of  you  to  be 
virtuous.  Passions  may  be  strong ;  but  not  too  strong  to  be 
resisted  through  that  grace  which  is  given  to  all  who  seek 
it,  but  forced  upon  none  who  despise  it.  Temptations  may 
be  powerful ;  they  are  never  irresistible ;  he  who  struggles 
shall  be  made  victorious ;  but  God  delivers  none  who  are 
not  striving  to  deliver  themselves. 

Be  watchful  therefore — watchful  against  sins  of  the  flesh, 
watchful  against  sins  of  the  mind.  Against  sins  of  the  flesh 
— sensuality  so  debases  and  enervates,  that  the  soul,  as 
though  sepulchred  in  the  body,  can  do  nothing  towards  vin- 
dicating her  origin.  "  Unto  the  pure  all  things  are  pure ; 
but  unto  them  that  are  denied  and  unbelieving  is  nothing 
pure,  but  even  their  mind  and  conscience  is  defiled."  Against 
sins  of  the  mind — take  heed  that  ye  do  not  so  admire  and 
extol  reason,  as  to  think  lightly  of  revelation.  Ye  live  in 
days  when  mind  is  on  the  stretch,  and  in  scenes  where 
there  is  every  thing  to  call  it  out.  And  we  do  not  wish  to 
make  you  less  acute,  less  inquiring,  less  intelligent,  than  the 
warmest  admirers  of  reason  can  desire  you  to  become.  We 
only  wish  you  to  remember  that  arrogance  is  not  greatness, 
and  that  conceit  is  the  index,  not  of  strength,  but  of  weak- 
ness. To  exalt  reason  beyond  its  due  place  is  to  debase  it ; 
to  set  the  human  in  rivalry  with  the  divine  is  to  make  it 
contemptible.  Let  reason  count  the  stars,  weigh  the  moun- 
tains, fathom  the  depths — the  employment  becomes  her,  and 
the  success  is  glorious.  But  when  the  question  is,  "how 
shall  a  man  be  just  with  God,"  reason  must  be  silent,  reve- 
lation must  speak  ;  and  he  who  will  not  hear  it  assimilates 
himself  to  the  first  Deist,  Cain  ;  he  may  not  kill  a  brother, 
he  certainly  destroys  himself. 

And  that  you  may  be  aided  in  overcoming  sin,  let  your 
thoughts  dwell  often  on  that  "  strict  and  solemn  account 
which  you  must  one  day  give  at  the  judgment-seat  of 
Christ."  I  have  endeavored  to  speak  to  you  of  the  gene- 
ral resurrection  and  the  last  great  assize.  To  the  large 
mass  of  you  it  is  not  probable  that  I  shall  ever  speak  again. 
But  we  shall  meet,  when  the  sheeted  dead  are  stirring,  and 


400    THE  GENERAL  RESURRECTION  AND  JUDGMENT. 

the  elements  are  dissolving.  And  "  knowing  the  terror  of 
the  Lord,  we  persuade  men."  Would  that  we  could  per- 
suade you.  Is  there  no  voice  from  the  "  great  white  throne  ;" 
nothing  startling  in  the  opened  books  ;  no  eloquence  in  the 
trumpet  of  the  archangel ;  nothing  terrible  in  the  doom,  "  de- 
part, ye  cursed,"  nothing  beautiful  in  the  words,  "  come,  ye 
blessed  ?"  I  cannot  plead  with  you,  if  insensible  to  the  sub- 
lime and  thrilling  oratory  of  the  judgment  scene.  If  you 
can  go  away,  and  be  as  dissipated  as  ever,  and  as  indifferent 
as  ever,  now  that  ye  have  beheld  the  Son  of  man  coming  in 
the  clouds,  and  heard,  as  it  were,  your  own  names  in  the 
shrill  summons  to  his  bar— what  can  I  say  to  you  ?  Indeed 
I  feel  that  there  are  no  more  formidable  weapons  in  the  mo- 
ral armory  ;  and  I  can  but  pray — for  there  is  yet  room  for 
prayer — that  God  would  put  sensibility  into  the  stone,  and 
give  you  feeling  enough  to  feel  for  yourselves. 


SERMON. 


THE  ANCHOR  OF  THE  SOUL. 


"  Which  hope  we  have  as  an  anchor  of  the  soul,  both  sure  and  stedfast 
and  which  entereth  into  that  within  the  veil."— Hebrews,  6  :  19. 

It  is  a  very  peculiar  and  interesting  cause  which  I  have 
this  day  undertaken  to  plead— that  of  the  Floating  Church, 
which  offers  the  means  of  grace  to  our  river  population,  to 
the  most  useful,  and  well  nigh  the  most  neglected  of  our 
countrymen — those  who  are  carrying  on  our  commerce, 
who  have  fought  our  battles,  and  who  are  ready,  if  peace  be 
disturbed,  to  fight  them  again  with  equal  valor,  and,  through 
God's  help,  with  equal  success.  If  there  be  a  call  to  which 
the  hearts  of  Englishmen  more  naturally  respond  than  to 
any  other,  it  must  be  that  which  demands  succor  for  sailors. 
As  a  nation  we  seem  to  have  less  fellowship  with  the  land 
than  with  the  sea ;  and  our  strongest  sympathies  are  with 
those  who  plough  its  surface,  and  dare  its  perils.  I  feel, 
therefore,  that  I  never  had  a  charity-sermon  to  preach,  whose 
subject  gave  me  so  powerful  a  hold  on  the  feelings  of  a  con- 
gregation ;  and  I  think  that  this  hold  will  not  be  lessened,  if 
I  engage  your  attention  with  a  passage  of  Scripture,  in  which 
the  imagery,  if  I  may  use  the  expression,  is  peculiarly  mari- 
time, whilst  the  truths  which  are  inculcated  are  of  the  most 
interesting  kind.  The  apostle  Paul  had  just  been  speaking 
of  "  laying  hold  on  the  hope  set  before  us,"  by  which  he 
seems  to  denote  the  appropriation  of  those  various  blessings 
which  have  all  been  procured  for  us  by  Christ.  The  hope 
51 


402  THE  ANCHOR  OF  THE  SOUL. 

is  that  of  eternal  life  ;  and  to  lay  hold  on  this  hope,  must  be 
so  to  believe  upon  Christ,  that  we  have  share  in  those  suffer- 
ings and  merits  which  have  purchased  forgiveness  and  im- 
mortality for  the  lost.  And  when  the  apostle  proceeds,  in 
the  words  of  our  text,  to  describe  this  hope  as  an  anchor  of 
the  soul,  we  are  to  understand  him  as  declaring  that  the  ex- 
pectation of  God's  favor,  and  of  the  glories  of  heaven,  through 
the  atonement  and  intercession  of  Christ,  is  exactly  calcula- 
ted to  keep  us  stedfast  and  unmoved  amid  all  the  tempests  of 
our  earthly  estate.  We  shall  assume,  then,  as  we  are  fully 
warranted  by  the  context  in  doing,  that  the  hope  in  question 
is  the  hope  of  salvation,  through  the  finished  work  of  the 
Mediator.  And  it  will  be  our  chief  business  to  engage  you 
with  the  metaphorical  description  which  the  apostle  gives 
of  this  hope,  and  thus  aptly  to  introduce  the  peculiar  claims 
of  the  Floating  Church.  St.  Paul  likens  this  hope  to  an  an- 
chor ;  and  then  declares  of  this  anchor,  or  the  hope,  that  it 
"  entereth  into  that  within  the  veil."  Let  these  be  our  to- 
pics of  discourse : 

The  first,  that  the  christian's  hope  is  as  an  anchor  to  his 
-soul. 

The  second,  that  this  hope,  or  this  anchor,  "  entereth  in- 
to that  within  the  veil." 

I.  Now  the  idea  which  is  immediately  suggested  by  this 
metaphor  of  the  anchor  is  that  of  our  being  exposed  to  great 
moral  peril,  tossed  on  rough  waters,  and  in  danger  of  mak- 
ing shipwreck  of  our  faith.  And  we  must  be  well  aware,  if 
at  all  acquainted  with  ourselves  and  our  circumstances,  that 
such  idea  is  in  every  respect  accurate,  and  that  the  imagery 
of  a  tempest-tossed  ship,  girt  about  by  the  rock  and  the 
quicksand,  as  well  as  beaten  by  the  hurricane,  gives  no  ex- 
aggerated picture  of  the  believer  in  Christ,  as  opposition, 
under  various  forms,  labors  at  his  ruin.  We  are  not,  indeed, 
concerned  at  present  with  delineating  the  progress,  but  only 
the  stedfastness  of  the  christian  ;  but  here,  also,  the  ocean, 
with  its  waves  and  its  navies,  furnishes  the  aptest  of  figures. 
If  there  be  any  principle,  or  any  set  of  principles,  which 
keeps  the  christian  firm  and  immovable  amid  the  trials  and 


THE    ANCHOR    OE    THE    SOUL.  403 

tempests,  which,  like  billows  and  winds,  beat  on  him  fu- 
riously, it  is  evident  that  we  may  fairly  liken  that  principle, 
or  that  set  of  principles,  to  the  anchor,  which  holds  the  ship 
fast,  whilst  the  elements  are  raging,  and  enables  her  to  ride 
out  in  safety  the  storm.  And  all,  therefore,  that  is  necessary, 
in  order  to  the  vindicating  the  metaphor  of  our  text  is,  the 
showing  that  the  hope  of  which  St.  Paul  speaks  is  just  cal- 
culated for  the  giving  the  christian  this  fixedness,  and  thus 
preventing  his  being  driven  on  the  rock,  or  drawn  into  the 
whirlpool. 

There  are  several,  and  all  simple  modes,  in  which  it  may 
be  shown  that  such  is  the  property  of  this  hope.  We  first 
observe,  that  there  is  great  risk  of  our  being  carried  about, 
as  an  apostle  expresses  it,  "  with  every  wind  of  doctrine  ;" 
and  whatever,  therefore,  tends  to  the  keeping  us  in  the  right 
faith,  in  spite  of  gusts  of  error,  must  deserve  to  be  characte- 
rized as  an  anchor  of  the  soul.  But,  we  may  unhesitatingly 
declare,  that  there  is  a  power,  the  very  strongest,  in  the 
hope  of  salvation  through  Christ,  of  enabling  us  to  stand 
firm  against  the  incursions  of  heresy.  The  man  who  has 
this  hope  will  have  no  ear  for  doctrines  which,  in  the  least 
degree,  depreciate  the  person  or  work  of  the  Mediator.  You 
take  away  from  him  all  that  he  holds  most  precious,  if  you 
could  once  shake  his  belief  in  the  atonement.  It  is  not  that 
he  is  afraid  of  examining  the  grounds  of  his  own  confi- 
dence; it  is,  that,  having  well  examined  them,  and  certified 
himself  as  to  their  being  irreversible,  his  confidence  has 
become  wound  up,  as  it  were,  with  his  being;  and  it  is  like 
assaulting  his  existence,  to  assault  his  hope.  The  hope  pre- 
supposes faith  in  the  Savior ;  and  faith  has  reasons  for  the 
persuasion  that  Jesus  is  God's  Son,  and  "  able  to  save  to  the 
uttermost  :•"  and  though  the  individual  is  ready  enough  to 
probe  these  reasons,  and  to  bring  them  to  any  fitting  crite- 
rion, it  is  evident,  that  where  faith  has  once  taken  posses- 
sion, and  generated  hope,  he  has  so  direct  and  overwhelm- 
ing an  interest  in  holding  fast  truth,  that  it  must  be  more 
than  a  specious  objection,  or  a  well-turned  cavil,  which  will 
prevail  to  the  loosening  of  his  grasp.    And  therefore;  da  W0 


404  THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL. 

affirm  of  the  hope  of  salvation,  that  he  who  has  it,  is  little 
likely  to  be  carried  about  with  every  wind  of  doctrine.  We 
scarcely  dare  think  that  those  who  are  christians  only  in 
profession  and  theory,  would  retain  truth  without  wavering, 
if  exposed  to  the  machinations  of  insidious  rensoners.  They 
do  not  feel  their  everlasting  portion  so  dependent  on  the 
doctrine  of  redemption  through  the  blood  and  righteousness 
of  a  Surety,  that,  to  shake  this  doctrine,  is  to  make  them 
castaways  for  eternity;  and  therefore,  neither  can  they  op- 
pose that  resistance  to  assault  which  will  be  offered  by 
others  who  know  that  it  is  their  immortality  they  are  called 
to  surrender.  You  may  look,  then,  on  an  individual,  who, 
apparently  unprepared  for  a  vigorous  defence  of  his  creed, 
is  yet  not  to  be  overborne  by  the  strongest  onset  of  heresy. 
And  you  may  think  to  account  for  his  firmness  by  resolving 
it  into  a  kind  of  obstinacy,  which  makes  him  inaccessible 
to  argument ;  and  thus  take  from  his  constancy  all  moral 
excellence,  by  representing  it  as  imperviousness  to  all  moral 
attack.  But  we  have  a  better  explanation  to  propose  ;  one 
which  does  not  proceed  on  the  unwarranted  assumption, 
that  there  must  be  insensibility  where  there  has  not  been 
defeat.  We  know  of  the  individual,  that  he  has  fled  for  re- 
fuge to  lay  hold  on  the  hope  set  before  him  in  the  Gospel. 
And  you  may  say  of  hope,  that  it  is  a  shadowy  and  airy 
thing,  not  adapted  to  the  keeping  man  firm;  but  we  assert, 
on  the  contrary,  of  the  hope  of  salvation,  that  he  who  has 
grasped  it,  feels  that  he  has  grasped  what  is  substantial  and 
indestructible ;  and  that  henceforward,  to  wrench  away 
this  hope  would  be  like  wrenching  away  the  rafter  from 
the  drowning  man,  who  knows  that,  if  he  loosen  his  hold, 
he  must  perish  in  the  waters.  Ay,  the  hope  is  too  precious 
to  be  tamely  surrendered.  It  has  animated  him  too  much, 
and  cheered  him  too  much,  and  sustained  him  too  much,  to 
be  given  up  otherwise  than  inch  by  inch — every  fraction  of 
the  truths  on  which  it  rests  being  disputed  for,  with  that 
vehemence  of  purpose  which  proves  the  consciousness  that 
with  defeat  can  come  nothing  but  despair.  And  therefore  is 
it  that  so  little  way  is  made  by  the  teacher  of  infidelity  and 


THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL.  405 

error.  He  is  striving  to  prevail  on  the  individual  he  attacks, 
to  throw  away,  as  worthless,  a  treasure  which  he  would  not 
change  for  whatsoever  earth  can  proffer  of  the  rich  and  the 
glorious  ;  and  where  is  the  marvel,  if  he  find  himself  resist- 
ed with  the  determination  of  one  who  wrestles  for  his  all? 
You  may  liken,  then,  the  believer  in  Christ  to  a  vessel 
launched,  on  troubled  waters ;  and  you  may  consider  scep- 
ticism and  false  doctrine  as  the  storms  which  threaten  him 
with  shipwreck.  And  when  you  express  surprise  that  a 
bark,  which  seems  so  frail,  and  so  poorly  equipped  against 
the  tempest,  should  ride  out  the  hurricane,  whilst  others,  a 
thousand  times  better  furnished  with  all  the  resources  of 
intellectual  seamanship,  drive  from  their  moorings,  and 
perish  on  the  quicksand ;  we  have  only  to  tell  you,  that  it  is 
not  by  the  strength  of  reason,  and  not  through  the  might  of 
mental  energy,  that  moral  shipwreck  is  avoided  ;  but  that  a 
hope  of  salvation  will  keep  the  vessel  firm  when  all  the 
cables  which  man  weaves  for  himself  have  given  way  like 
tow;  and  that  thus,  in  the  wildest  of  the  storms  which  evil 
men  and  evil  angels  can  raise,  this  hope  will  verify  the 
apostle's  description,  that  it  is  an  anchor  of  the  soul,  and 
that,  too,  sure  and  stedfast. 

But  there  are  other  respects  in  which  it  may  be  equally 
shown,  that  there  is  a  direct  tendency  in  christian  hope  to 
the  promoting  christian  stedfastness.  We  observe,  next, 
that  a  believer  in  Christ  is  in  as  much  danger  of  being- 
moved  by  the  trials  with  which  he  meets,  as  by  attacks  upon 
his  faith.  But  he  has  a  growing  consciousness  that  "  all 
things  work  together  for  good,"  and  therefore  an  increasing 
submissiveness  in  the  season  of  tribulation,  or  an  ever- 
strengthening  adherence  to  Cod,  as  to  a  father.  And  that 
which  contributes,  perhaps  more  than  aught  besides,  to  the 
producing  this  adherence,  is  the  hope  on  which  the  chris- 
tian lays  hold.  If  you  study  the  language  of  David  when 
in  trouble,  you  will  find  that  it  was  hope  by  which  he  was 
sustained.  He  describes  himself  in  terms  which  accurately 
correspond  to  the  imagery  of  our  text.  ':  Deep  calleth  unto 
deep  at  the  noise  of  thy  waterspouts;   all  thy  waves  and 


406  THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL. 

ihy  billows  are  gone  over  me."  But  when  the  tempest 
was  thus  at  its  height,  and  every  thing  seemed  to  con- 
spire to  overwhelm  and  destroy  him,  he  could  yet  say, 
"  Why  art  thou  cast  down,  O  my  soul  !  and  why  art  thou 
disquieted  within  me  ?  Hope  thou  in  God  ;  for  I  shall  yet 
praise  Him,  who  is  the  health  of  my  countenance,  and  my 
God."  It  is  hope,  you  observe,  to  which  he  turns,  as  the 
principle  through  which  the  soul  might  best  brave  the  hur- 
ricane. And  can  we  wonder  that  a  hope,  such  as  that  of  the 
believer  in  Christ,  should  so  contribute  to  the  stedfastness 
of  its  possessor,  that  the  winds  may  buffet  him,  and  the  floods 
beat  against  him,  and  yet  he  remains  firm,  like  the  well- 
anchored  vessel  ?  He  knew  that,  in  throwing  in  his  lot  with 
the  followers  of  Jesus,  he  was  consenting  to  a  life  of  stern 
moral  discipline,  and  that  he  must  be  prepared  for  a  more 
than  ordinary  share  of  those  chastisements  from  which 
nature  recoils.  And  why,  forewarned  as  he  thus  was  of  what 
would  be  met  with  in  a  christian  course,  did  he  adventure 
on  the  profession  of  a  religion  that  was  to  multiply  his 
troubles?  Why  embarked  he  on  an  ocean,  swept  by  fiercer 
winds,  and  arched  with  darker  skies,  when  he  might  have 
shaped  his  voyage  over  less  agitated  waters?  We  need  not 
tell  you,  that  he  has  heard  of  a  bright  land,  which  is  only  to 
be  reached  by  launching  forth  on  the  boisterous  sea.  We 
need  not  tell  you,  that  he  assured  himself,  upon  evidence 
which  admits  no  dispute,  that  there  is  no  safety  for  a  vessel 
freighted  with  immortality,  unless  she  be  tempest-tossed  ; 
and  that,  though  there  may  be  a  smoother  expanse,  dotted 
with  islands  which  seem  clad  with  a  richer  verdure,  and 
sparkling  with  a  sunshine  which  is  more  cheering  to 
the  senses  of  the  mariner,  yet  that  it  is  on  the  lake,  thus 
sleeping  in  its  beauty,  that  the  ship  is  in  most  peril  ;  and 
that  if  the  lake  be  changed  for  the  wild  broad  ocean,  then 
only  will  a  home  be  reached  where  no  storm  rages,  and  no 
clouds  darken,  but  where,  in  one  unbroken  tranquillity,  those 
who  have  braved  the  moral  tempest  will  repose  eternally 
in  the  light  of  God's  countenance.  It  is  hope,  then,  by 
which  the  christian  was  animated,  when  taking  his  resolve 


TUB    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL.  407 

to  breast  the  fury  of  every  adversary,  and  embrace  a  religion 
which  told  him  that  in  the  world  he  should  have  tribulation. 
And  when  the  tribulation  comes,  and  the  crested  waves  are 
swelling  higher  and  higher,  why  should  you  expect  him  to 
be  driven  back,  or  swallowed  up?  Is  it  the  loss  of  property 
with  which  he  is  visited,  and  which  threatens  to  shake  his 
dependance  upon  God?  Hope  whispers  that  he  has  in  heaven 
an  enduring  substance  ;  and  he  takes  joyfully  the  spoiling  of 
his  goods.  Is  it  the  loss  of  friends  ?  He  sorrows  not  "  even 
as  others  which  have  no  hope,"  but  is  comforted  by  the 
knowledge,  that  "  them  also  which  sleep  in  Jesus  will  God 
bring  with  him."  Is  it  sickness — is  it  the  treachery  of  friends 
— is  it  the  failure  of  cherished  plans,  which  hangs  the  fir- 
mament with  blackness,  and  works  the  waters  into  fury? 
None  of  these  things  move  him;  for  hope  assures  him  that 
his  "  light  affliction,  which  is  but  for  a  moment,  worketh  for 
him  a  far  more  exceeding  and  eternal  weight  of  glory."  Is 
it  death,  which,  advancing  in  its  awfulness,  would  beat  down 
his  confidence,  and  snap  his  cordage,  and  send  him  adrift? 
His  hope  is  a  hope  full  of  immortality :  he  knows  "in  whom 
he  hath  believed,  and  is  persuaded  that  he  is  able  to  keep 
that  which  he  hath  committed  unto  him  against  that  day." 
And  thus,  from  whatever  point  the  tempest  rages,  there  is  a 
power  in  that  hope  which  God  hath  implanted,  of  holding 
fast  the  christian,  and  preventing  his  casting  away  that  con- 
fidence which  hath  great  recompense  of  reward.  We  can 
bid  you  look  upon  him,  when,  on  every  human  calculation, 
so  fierce  is  the  hurricane,  and  so  wrought  are  the  waves  into 
madness,  there  would  seem  no  likelihood  of  his  avoiding  the 
making  shipwreck  of  his  faith.  And  when  you  find,  that, 
in  place  of  being  stranded  or  engulfed,  he  resists  the  wild 
onset,  and,  if  he  do  not  for  the  moment  advance,  keeps  the 
way  he  has  made,  oh  !  then  we  have  an  easy  answer  to  give 
to  inquiries  as  to  the  causes  of  this  unexpected  stedfastness. 
We  do  not  deny  the  strength  of  the  storm,  and  the  might  of 
the  waters  ;  but  we  tell  you  of  a  hope  which  grows  stronger 
and  stronger  as  tribulation  increases :  stronger,  because  sor- 
row is  the  known  discipline  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  object 


403  THE  ANCHOR  OF  THE  SOUL. 

of  this  hope  ;  stronger,  because  the  proved  worthlessness  of 
what  is  earthly  serves  to  fix  the  affections  more  firmly  on 
what  is  heavenly  ;  stronger,  inasmuch  as  there  are  promises 
of  God,  which  seem  composed  on  purpose  for  the  season  of 
trouble,  and  which,  then  grasped  by  faith,  throw  new  vigor 
into  hope.  And  certainly,  if  we  may  affirm  all  this  of  the 
hope  of  a  christian,  there  is  no  room  for  wonder  that  he 
rides  out  the  hurricane  ;  for  such  hope  is  manifestly  an  an- 
chor of  the  soul,  and  that,  too,  sure  and  stedfast. 

We  go  on  to  observe,  that  the  christian  is  exposed  to  great 
varieties  of  temptation  :  the  passions  of  an  evil  nature,  and 
the  enticements  of  a  "  world  which  lieth  in  wickedness," 
conspire  to  draw  him  aside  from  righteousness,  and  force 
him  back  to  the  habits  and  scenes  which  he  has  professedly 
abandoned.  The  danger  of  spiritual  shipwreck  would  be 
comparatively  small,  if  the  sea  on  which  he  voyages  were 
swept  by  no  storms  but  those  of  sorrow  and  persecution. 
The  risk  is  far  greater,  when  he  is  assaulted  by  the  solici- 
tations of  his  own  lusts,  and  the  corrupt  affections  of  his 
nature  are  plied  with  their  correspondent  objects.  And 
though  it  too  often  happens  that  he  is  overcome  by  tempta- 
tion ;  we  are  sure,  that,  if  he  kept  hope  in  exercise,  he  would 
not  be  moved  by  the  pleadings  of  the  flesh  and  the  world. 
Let  hope  be  in  vigor,  and  the  christian's  mind  is  fixed  on  a 
portion  which  he  can  neither  measure  by  his  imagination, 
nor  be  deprived  of  by  his  enemies.  He  is  already  in  a  city 
which  hath  no  need  of  the  sun,  neither  of  the  moon  ;  whose 
walls  are  of  jasper,  and  whose  streets  of  gold.  Already  he 
joins  the  general  assembly  and  church  of  the  first-born — al- 
ready is  he  the  equal  of  angels — already  is  he  advancing 
with  a  shining  company,  which  no  man  can  number,  to- 
wards the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb,  and  beholding 
face  to  face  the  Creator  and  Redeemer,  and  bursting  into  an 
ecstasy  of  adoration,  as  the  magnificence  of  Deity  is  more 
and  more  developed.  And  now,  if,  at  a  time  such  as  this, — 
when  it  may  almost  be  said  that  he  has  entered  the  haven, 
that  he  breathes  the  fragrance,  and  gazes  on  the  loveliness, 
and  shares  the  delights  of  the  Paradise  of  God,— he  be  soli- 


THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL. 


409 


cited  to  the  indulgence  of  a  lust,  the  sacrifice  of  a  principle, 
or  the  pursuit  of  a  bauble, — can  you  think  the  likelihood  to 
be  great  that  he  will  be  mastered  by  the  temptation,  that  he 
will  return,  at  the  summons  of  some  low  passion,  from  his 
splendid  excursion,  and  defile  himself  with  the  impurities 
of  earth  ?  Oh  !  we  can  be  confident — and  the  truth  is  so 
evident  as  not  to  need  proof — that,  in  proportion  as  a  man 
is  anticipating  the  pleasures  of  eternity,  he  will  be  firm  in 
his  resolve  of  abstaining  from  the  pleasures  of  sin.  We  can 
be  confident,  that  if  hope,  the  hope  set  before  us  in  the  Gos- 
pel, be  earnestly  clung  to,  there  will  be  no  room  in  the 
grasp  for  the  glittering  toys  with  which  Satan  would  bribe 
us  io  throw  away  our  eternity.  And  therefore, — to  bring  the 
matter  again  under  the  figure  of  our  text, — we  can  declare 
of  hope,  that  it  ministers  to  christian  stedfastness,  when  the 
temptations  of  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  combine 
to  produce  wavering  and  inconstancy.  Again  we  liken  the 
christian  to  a  ship,  and  the  temptations  by  which  he  is  met 
to  a  tempest,  which  threatens  to  drive  him  back,  and  cast 
him  a  wreck  upon  the  shore.  And  it  would  avail  nothing 
that  he  was  furnished  with  the  anchors,  if  such  they  may 
be  called,  of  a  philosophic  love  of  virtue,  of  a  feeling  that 
vice  is  degrading  to  man,  and  of  a  general  opinion  that  God 
may  possibly  approve  self-denial.  If  these  held  the  ship  at 
first,  they  would  quickly  give  way,  when  the  storm  of  evil 
passion  grew  towards  its  height.  But  hope— the  hope  of  a 
heaven  into  which  shall  enter  nothing  that  defileth  ;  the 
hope  of  joys  as  pure  as  they  are  lofty,  and  as  spiritual  as 
they  are  abiding ;  the  hope  of  what  the  eye  hath  not  seen, 
and  the  ear  hath  not  heard,  but  which  can  be  neither  at- 
tained nor  enjoyed  without  holiness — this  hope,  we  say,  is  a 
christian's  sheet-anchor  in  the  hurricane  of  temptation  ;  and 
if  he  use  this  hope,  in  his  endeavors  to  bear  up  against  the 
elements,  he  shall,  by  God's  help,  weather  the  worst  moral 
storm  ;  and  then,  when  the  sky  is  again  bright,  and  the 
mighty  billows  have  subsided,  and  the  vessel  again  spreads 
her  canvass,  oh  !  he  shall  gratefully  and  rejoicingly  confess 
52 


410  THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL. 

of  this  hope,  that  it  is  an  anchor  of  the  soul,  and  that,  too, 
sure  and  stedfast. 

II.  Now,  throughout  these  illustrations  we  have  rather 
assumed  than  proved  that  christian  hope  is  of  a  nature 
widely  different  from  that  of  any  other.  But  it  will  be  easily 
seen  that  we  have  claimed  for  it  nothing  beyond  the  truth , 
if  we  examine,  in  the  second  place,  the  apostle's  statement 
in  regard  of  a  christian's  hope,  that  it  "  entereth  into  that 
within  the  veil."  The  allusion  is  undoubtedly  to  the  veil, 
or  curtain,  which  separated  the  holy  place  from  the  holy  of 
holies  in  the  temple  at  Jerusalem.  By  the  holy  of  holies 
was  typified  the  scene  of  God's  immediate  presence,  into 
which  Christ  entered  when  the  days  of  his  humiliation 
were  ended.  And  hence  we  understand  by  the  hope,  or  the 
anchor,  entering  within  the  veil,  that,  in  believing  upon 
Jesus,  we  fasten  ourselves,  as  it  were,  to  the  realities  of  the 
invisible  world.  This  throws  new  and  great  light  on  the 
simile  of  our  text.  It  appears  that  the  christian,  whilst 
tossing  on  a  tempestuous  sea,  is  fast  bound  to  another  scene 
of  being ;  and  that,  whilst  the  vessel  is  on  the  waters  of  time, 
the  anchor  is  on  the  rock  of  eternity.  And  it  is  not  possible 
that  the  soul  should  find  safe  anchorage  without  the  veil. 
Conscious  as  she  is,  and  often  forced  to  allow  scope  to  the 
consciousness,  that  she  is  not  to  perish  with  the  body,  she 
may  strive,  indeed,  to  attach  herself  firmly  to  terrestrial 
things  ■  but  an  overgrown  restlessness  will  prove  that  she 
has  cast  her  anchor  where  it  cannot  gain  a  hold.  If  we 
were  merely  intellectual  beings,  and  not  also  immortal,  the 
case  might  be  different.  There  might  be  an  anchor  of  the 
mind,  which  entered  not  into  that  within  the  veil,  of  strength 
enough,  and  tenacity  enough,  to  produce  stedfastness  amid 
the  fluctuations  of  life.  But  immortal  as  we  are,  as  well  as 
intellectual,  the  anchor  of  the  soul  must  be  dropped  in  the 
waters  of  the  boundless  hereafter.  And  when,  after  vain 
efforts  to  preserve  herself  from  wreck  and  disquietude,  by 
fixing  her  hope  on  things  which  perish  with  the  using5 
she  is  taught  of  God  to  make  heaven  and  its  glories  the 
object  of  expectation,  then   it   is  as    though   she  had   let 


THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOTIT..  411 

down  her  anchor  to  the  very  base  of  the  everlasting  hills, 
and  a  mighty  hold  is  gained,  and  the  worst  tempest  may 
be  defied.  The  soul  which  is  thus  anchored  in  eternity, 
is  like  the  vessel  which  a  staunch  cable  binds  to  the  dis- 
tant shore,  and  which  gradually  warps  itself  into  harbor. 
There  is  at  once  what  will  keep  her  stedfast  in  the  storm, 
and  advance  her  towards  the  haven.  Who  knows  not 
that  the  dissatisfaction  which  men  always  experience  whilst 
engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  earthly  good,  arises  mainly  from 
a  vast  disproportion  between  their  capacities  for  happiness, 
and  that  material  of  happiness  with  which  they  think 
to  fill  them  ?  What  they  hope  for  is  some  good,  respecting 
which  they  might  be  certain,  that,  if  attained,  it  will  only 
disappoint.  And  therefore  is  it,  that,  in  place  of  being  as  an 
anchor,  hope  itself  agitates  them,  driving  them  hither  and 
thither,  like  ships  without  ballast.  But  it  is  not  thus  with  a 
hope  which  entereth  within  the  veil.  -  Within  the  veil  are 
laid  up  joys  and  possessions  which  are  more  than  commen- 
surate with  men's  capacities  for  happiness,  when  stretched 
to  the  utmost.  Within  the  veil  is  a  glory,  such  as  was  never 
proposed  by  ambition  in  its  most  daring  flight ;  and  a  wealth, 
such  as  never  passed  before  avarice  in  its  most  golden 
dreams  ;  and  delights,  such  as  imagination,  when  employed 
in  delineating  the  most  exquisite  pleasures,  hath  never  been 
able  to  array.  And  let  hope  fasten  on  this  glory,  this  wealth, 
these  delights,  and  presently  the  soul,  as  though  she  felt  that 
the  objects  of  desire  were  as  ample  as  herself,  acquires  a 
fixedness  of  purpose,  a  steadiness  of  aim,  a  combination  of 
energies,  which  contrast  strangely  with  the  inconstancy,  the 
vacillation,  the  distraction,  which  have  made  her  hitherto 
the  sport  of  every  wind  and  every  wave.  The  object  of 
hope  being  immeasurable,  inexhaustible,  hope  clings  to  this 
object  with  a  tenacity  ;  which  it  cannot  manifest  when  grasp- 
ing only  the  insignificant  and  unsubstantial ;  and  thus  the 
soul  is  bound,  we  might  almost  say  indissolubly,  to  the  un- 
changeable realities  of  the  inheritance  of  the  saints.  And 
can  you  marvel,  if,  with  her  anchor  thus  dropped  within  the 
veil,  she  is  not  to  be  driven  from  her  course  by  the  wildest  of 


412  THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL. 

the  storms  which  yet  rage  without  ?  Besides,  within  the  veil 
is  an  Intercessor,  whose  pleadings  insure  that  these  objects 
of  hope  shall  be  finally  attained.  There  is  something  exqui- 
sitely beautiful  in  the  idea,  that  the  anchor  has  not  been 
dropped  in  the  rough  waters  which  the  christian  has  to  na- 
vigate. The  anchor  rests  where  there  is  one  eternal  calm, 
and  its  hold  is  on  a  rock,  which  no  action  of  the  waves  can 
wear  down.  You  may  say  of  christian  hope,  that  it  is  a 
principle  which  gives  fixedness  to  the  soul,  because  it  can 
appeal  to  an  ever-living,  ever-prevalent  Intercessor,  who  is 
pledged  to  make  good  its  amplest  expectations.  It  is  the 
hope  of  joys  which  have  been  purchased  at  a  cost  which  it 
is  not  possible  to  compute,  and  which  are  delivered  into  a 
guardianship  which  it  is  not  possible  to  defeat.  It  is  the 
hope  of  an  inheritance,  our  title  to  which  has  been  written 
in  the  blood  of  the  Mediator,  and  our  entrance  into  which 
that  Mediator  ever  lives  to  secure.  And  therefore  is  it  that 
we  affirm  of  christian  hope,  that  it  is  precisely  adapted  to  the 
preventing  the  soul  from  being  borne  away  by  the  gusts  of 
temptation,  or  swallowed  up  in  the  deep  waters  of  trial.  It 
is  more  than  hope.  It  is  hope  with  all  its  attractiveness,  and 
with  none  of  its  uncertainty.  It  is  hope  with  all  that  beauty 
and  brilliancy  by  which  men  are  fascinated,  and  with  none 
of  that  delusiveness  by  which  they  are  deceived.  It  is  hope, 
with  its  bland  and  soothing  voice,  but  that  voice  whispering 
nothing  but  truth  ;  hope,  with  its  untired  wing,  but  that 
wing  lifting  only  to  regions  which  have  actual  existence ; 
hope,  with  its  fairy  pencil,  but  that  pencil  painting  only 
what  really  flashes  with  the  gold  and  vermilion.  Oh,  if 
hope  be  fixed  upon  Christ,  that  Rock  of  Ages, — a  rock  rent, 
if  we  may  use  the  expression,  on  purpose  that  there  might 
be  a  holding-place  for  the  anchors  of  a  perishing  world, — it 
may  well  come  to  pass  that  hope  gives  the  soul  stedfastness. 
I  know  that  within  the  veil  there  ever  reisfneth  one  who  ob- 
tained right,  by  his  a^ony  and  passion,  to  rear  eternal  man- 
sions for  those  who  believe  upon  his  name.  I  know  that  with- 
in the  veil  there  are  not  only  pleasures  and  possessions  ade- 
quate to  the  capacities  of  my  nature,  when  advanced  to  full 


THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL.  413 

manhood,  but  a  friend,  a  surety,  an  advocate,  who  cannot  be 
prevailed  with,  even  by  my  unworthiness,  to  refuse  me  a 
share  in  what  he  died  to  procure,  and  lives  to  bestow.  And 
therefore,  if  I  fix  my  hope  within  the  veil  ;  within  the  veil, 
where  are  the  alone  delights  that  can  satisfy ;  within  the 
veil,  where  is  Christ,  whose  intercession  can  never  be  in 
vain, — hope  will  be  such  as  is  neither  to  be  diverted  by 
passing  attractions,  nor  daunted  by  apprehensions  of  failure  : 
it  will,  consequently,  keep  me  firm  alike  amid  the  storm  of 
evil  passions,  and  the  inrush  of  Satan's  suggestions  ;  it  will 
enable  me  equally  to  withstand  the  current  which  would 
hurry  me  into  disobedience,  and  the  eddies  which  would 
sink  me  into  despondency.  And,  oh,  then,  is  it  not  with  jus- 
tice that  I  declare  of  hope,  that  "  it  is  an  anchor  of  the  soul 
both  sure  and  stedfast ;"  and  that  I  give  as  the  reason,  that 
"  it  entereth  into  that  within  the  veil  !" 

And  now  we  may  safely  ask,  whether,  if  you  know  any 
thing  practically  of  the  worth  of  christian  hope,  you  can  be 
indifferent  to  the  condition  of  thousands  around  you,  who 
have  no  such  anchor  of  the  soul  ?  If  you  are  anchored  within 
the  veil,  can  you  look  on  with  unconcern,  whilst  many  a 
noble  bark,  on  the  right  hand  and  on  the  left,  freighted  with 
immortality,  is  drifting  to  and  fro,  the  sport  of  every  wind, 
and  in  danger,  each  instant,  of  being  wrecked  for  eternity  7 
We  are  sure  that  christian  privileges  are  of  so  generous  and 
communicative  a  nature,  that  no  man  can  possess,  and  not 
wish  to  impart  them.  And  if  there  be  a  class  of  individuals 
who,  on  all  accounts,  have  a  more  than  common  claim  on 
the  sympathy  of  christians,  because  more  than  commonly 
exposed  to  moral  tempests  and  dangers,  may  we  not  select 
sailors  as  that  class, — men  whose  business  is  in  great  waters, 
who  from  boyhood  have  been  at  home  on  the  sea,  whether 
in  storm  or  in  calm;  but  whose  opportunities  of  christian 
instruction  are,  for  the  most  part,  wretchedly  small ;  and  who 
learn  to  steer  to  every  harbor  except  that  which  lieth  within 
the  veil  ?  The  religious  public  have  much  to  answer  for  on 
account  of  the  neglect — of  course  we  speak  comparatively — 
which  they  have  manifested  towards  sailors.    Very  little  has 


414  THE  ANCHOR  OF  THE  SOUL. 

even  yet  been  done  towards  ameliorating  their  moral  condi- 
tion. So  soon  as  the  sailor  returns  to  port,  after  having  been 
long  tossed  on  distant  seas,  he  is  surrounded  by  miscreants, 
who  seek  to  entice  him  to  scenes  of  the  worst  profligacy,  that 
they  may  possess  themselves  of  his  hard-earned  gains.  And 
christian  philanthropy  has  been  very  slow  in  stepping  in,  and 
offering  an  asylum  to  the  sailor,  where  he  may  be  secure 
against  the  villany  which  would  ruin  body  and  soul.  Chris- 
tian philanthropy  has  been  very  slow  in  taking  measures  for 
providing,  that,  when  he  returned  from  his  wanderings — 
probably  to  find  many  in  the  grave  who  had  sent  anxious 
thoughts  after  him  as  he  ploughed  the  great  deep,  and  who 
had  vainly  hoped  to  welcome  him  back — he  should  have  the 
Gospel  preached  to  him,  and  the  ministers  of  Christianity  to 
counsel,  and  admonish,  and  encourage  him.  It  is  vain  to 
say,  that  our  churches  have  been  open,  and  that  the  sailor, 
as  well  as  the  landsman,  might  enter,  and  hear  the  glad 
tidings  of  redemption.  You  are  to  remember,  that  for  months, 
and  perhaps  even  years,  the  sailor  has  been  debarred  from 
the  means  of  grace;  he  has  been  in  strange  climes,  where 
he  has  seen  nothing  but  idolatry ;  even  the  forms  of  religion 
have  been  altogether  kept  from  him ;  and  now  he  requires 
to  be  sought  out,  and  entreated  ;  and  unless  in  some  peculiar 
mode  you  bring  the  Gospel  to  him,  the  likelihood  is  the  very 
smallest  of  his  seeking  it  for  himself.  But  we  thank  God 
that  of  late  years  attempts  have  been  made,  so  far  as  the  port 
of  this  great  city  is  concerned,  to  provide  christian  instruc- 
tion for  sailors.  There  is  now  a  Floating  Church  in  our 
river :  a  vessel,  which  had  been  built  for  the  battle,  and 
which  walked  the  waters  to  pour  its  thunder  on  the  enemies 
of  our  land,  has,  through  the  kindness  of  government,  been 
converted  into  a  place  of  worship ;  and  a  flag  waves  from 
it,  telling  the  mariner  that,  on  the  element  which  he  has 
made  his  own,  he  may  learn  how  to  cast  anchor  for  eternity  ; 
and  the  minister  of  this  church  moves  about  among  the 
swarming  ships,  as  he  would  move  through  his  parish,  en- 
deavoring by  the  use  of  all  the  engines  by  wnich  God  has 
intrusted  his  ambassadors,  to  arrest  vice,  and  gain  a  hold 


THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL.  415 

for  religion  amongst  the  wild  and  weather-beaten  crews. 
And  it  is  in  support  of  this  church  that  we  now  ask  your 
contributions.  His  Majesty  the  King,  by  the  liberal  annual 
subscription  of  50Z.  shows  how  warm  an  interest  he  takes 
in  the  cause,  and  recommends  it  to  the  succor  of  his  sub- 
jects. The  exemplary  bishop,  moreover,  of  this  diocese— 
whom  may  a  gracious  God  soon  restore  to  full  health— is 
deeply  interested  on  behalf  of  this  church.  But  you  cannot 
need  to  be  told  of  the  great  and  the  noble  who  support  this 
cause  ;  it  asks  not  the  recommendation  of  titled  patronage  ; 
you  are  Englishmen,  and  the  church  is  for  sailors.  Yes,  the 
church  is  for  sailors  ;  men  who  have  bled  for  us,  men  who 
fetch  for  us  all  the  productions  of  the  earth,  men  who  carry 
out  to  every  land  the  Bibles  we  translate,  and  the  missiona- 
ries we  equip :  the  church  is  for  sailors ;  and  yet  though 
the  annual  expenditure  is  only  between  three  and  four 
hundred  pounds,  the  stated  annual  income — I  am  almost 
ashamed  to  say  it — is  only  a  hundred  and  fifty.  I  am  persuad- 
ed, that  to  mention  this  will  suffice  to  procure  a  very  liberal 
collection.  I  cannot  bring  myself  to  attempt  the  working  on 
your  feelings.  When  I  plead  the  cause  of  sailors,  it  seems 
to  me  as  though  the  hurricane  and  the  battle,  the  ocean  with 
its  crested  billows,  and  war  with  its  magnificently  stern  re- 
tinue, met  and  mingled  to  give  force  to  the  appeal.  It  seems 
as  though  stranded  navies,  the  thousands  who  have  gone 
down  with  the  waves  for  their  winding-sheet,  and  who 
await  in  unfathomable  caverns  the  shrill  trumpet-peal  of  the 
archangel,  rose  to  admonish  us  of  the  vast  debt  we  owe  those 
brave  fellows  who  are  continually  jeoparding  their  lives  in 
our  service.  And  then  there  comes  also  before  me  the 
imagery  of  a  mother,  who  has  parted,  with  many  tears  and 
many  forebodings,  from  her  sailor-boy;  whose  thoughts 
have  accompanied  him,  as  none  but  those  of  a  mother  can, 
in  his  long  wanderings  over  the  deep,  and  who  would  re- 
joice, with  all  a  mother's  gladness,  to  know  that  where  his 
moral  danger  was  perhaps  greatest,  there  was  a  church  to 
receive  him,  and  a  minister  to  counsel  him.  But  we  shall 
not  enlarge  -on  such  topics.    We  only  throw  out  hints,  be- 


416  THE    ANCHOR    OF    THE    SOUL. 

lievmg  that  this  is  enough  to  waken  thoughts  in  your 
minds,  which  will  not  allow  of  your  contenting  yourselves 
with  such  contributions  as  are  the  ordinary  produce  of 
charity-sermons.  The  great  glory  of  England,  and  her  great 
defence,  have  long  lain,  under  the  blessing  of  God,  in  what 
we  emphatically  call  her  wooden  walls.  And  if  we  could 
make  vital  Christianity  general  amongst  our  sailors,  we 
should  have  done  more  than  can  be  calculated  towards  giv- 
ing permanence  to  our  national  greatness,  and  bringing  on- 
ward the  destruction  of  heathenism.  We  say  advisedly,  the 
destruction  of  heathenism.  The  influence  is  not  to  be  com- 
puted which  English  sailors  now  exert  for  evil  all  over  the 
globe.  They  are  scattered  all  over  the  globe  ;  but  too  often, 
though  far  from  always,  unhappily,  their  dissoluteness 
brings  discredit  on  the  christian  religion,  and  pagans  learn 
to  ridicule  the  faith  which  seems  prolific  of  nothing  but 
vice.  Our  grand  labor,  therefore,  should  be,  to  teach  our 
sailors  to  cast  anchor  within  the  veil  ;  and  then  in  all  their 
voyages  would  they  serve  as  missionaries,  and  not  a  ship 
would  leave  our  coasts  which  was  not  freighted  with 
preachers  of  redemption  ;  and  wheresoever  the  British  flag 
flies,  and  that  is  wheresoever  the  sea  beats,  would  the  stand- 
ard of  the  cross  be  displayed.  Ay,  man  our  wooden  walls 
with  men  who  have  taken  christian  hope  as  the  anchor  of 
the  soul ;  and  these  walls  shall  be  as  ramparts  which  no  ene- 
mies can  overthrow,  and  as  batteries  for  the  demolition  of 
the  strongholds  of  Satan.  Then, — and  may  God  hasten  the 
time,  and  may  you  now  prove  your  desire  for  its  coming — 
then  will  the  navy  of  England  be  every  where  irresistible, 
because  every  where  voyaging  in  the  strength  and  service 
of  the  Lord ;  and  the  noble  words  of  poetry  shall  be  true  in 
a  higher  sense  than  could  ever  yet  be  affirmed : 

"  Britannia  needs  no  bulwark, 

"  No  towers  along  the  steep ; 
"  Her  inarch  is  on  the  mountain-wave, 

'Her  home  is  on  the  deep  !" 


SPITAL     SERMON. 


Matthew,  26  :  11. 


"  For  ye  have  the  poor  always  with  you,  but  me  ye  have  not 
always." 


:j3 


This  Sermon  was  preached  according  to  annual  custom,  in 
commemoration  of  five  several  Hospitals  in  London.  Their  several 
Annual  Reports  were  read  in  the  course  of  the  Sermon,  as  indicated 
by  a  line  drawn  across  the  page  towards  the  end. 


SPITAL    SERMON 


u  For  ye  have  the  poor  always  with  you,  but  me  ye  have  not  always." — 
Matthew,  2G :  11. 

With  a  heart  full  of  the  remembrance  of  the  mercy  which 
had  been  shown  to  her  family,  did  Mary,  the  sister  of  Laza- 
rus, approach  and  pour  ointment  over  the  head  of  the  Re- 
deemer. Not  yet  sufficiently  taught  that  Christ  was  to  be 
honored  by  the  consecration  of  the  best  of  our  substance,  the 
disciples  murmured  at  what  they  thought  waste,  and  called 
forth  from  the  Savior  a  vindication  of  the  act.  He  pro- 
nounced it  possessed  of  a  kind  of  prophetical  power ;  and 
glancing  onwards  to  that  ignominious  death,  whereby  the 
world's  redemption  was  about  to  be  achieved,  declared  that 
it  had  been  done  for  his  burial,  and  thus  represented  it  as 
the  produce  of  that  affection  which  pays  eagerly  the  last 
honors  to  one  most  cherished  and  revered. 

Whether  or  no  there  had  been  given  intimation  to  Mary 
of  the  near  approach  of  the  final  scenes  of  Christ's  ministra- 
tion, does  not  appear  from  the  scriptural  record.  It  is  evi- 
dent, however,  that  Christ  grounds  his  defence  of  her  con- 
duct mainly  on  the  fact,  that  his  crucifixion  was  at  hand, 
making  the  proximity  of  that  stupendous  event  a  sufficient 
reason  for  the  course  which  she  had  followed.  Thus,  in 
conformity  with  the  manner  of  teaching  which  he  always 
pursued,  that  of  extracting  from  passing  occurrences  the 
material  of  some  spiritual  admonition,  he  takes  occasion,  from 
the  pouring  out  of  the  ointment,  to  deliver  a  truth  which 
hath  about  it  all  the  unction  of  divinity.  We  allow  that,  on 
its  original  deliverv,  our  text  had  a  decided  reference  to 


420  SPITAL    SERMON. 

existent  circumstances  ;  but  we  still  contend  that,  in  the  ful- 
ness of  its  meaning,  it  is  as  forcible  to  ourselves  as  it  was  to 
Mary  and  the  apostles.  There  was,  indeed,  a  contrast  im- 
plied in  the  first  instance,  which,  we  thank  God,  can  no 
longer  be  urged,  a  contrast  between  the  presence  of  Christ 
as  vouchsafed  to  his  church,  and  that  same  presence  for  a 
while  withdrawn.  The  heavens  have  received  the  Savior 
until  the  times  of  the  restitution  of  all  things;  but  though 
with  our  bodily  eyes  we  behold  him  not,  we  know  that  he  is 
never  absent  from  the  assemblies  of  his  people,  but  that 
"  where  two  or  three  are  met  together  in  his  name,  there  is 
he  in  the  midst  of  them." 

Until  the  Redeemer  had  won  to  himself,  by  his  agony  and 
his  passion,  the  mighty  title  of"  Head  over  all  things  to  the 
Church," — a  title  which  belongs  to  him  not  so  much  by  the 
rights  of  his  essential  deity,  as  through  virtue  of  his  having 
entered  into  humanity,  and  presented  it,  in  obedience  and 
suffering,  to  the  Creator — he  could  not  put  forth  those  gra- 
cious communications  which  supply  the  place  of  a  visible 
presence.  Hence  it  must  have  come  necessarily  to  pass,  that 
any  allusion  to  his  removal  from  earth  would  bring  a  cloud 
over  the  minds  of  his  disciples,  since  it  was  only  from  the 
headship  to  which  I  have  adverted  that  they  could  derive 
those  influences  which  teach  the  spiritual  nature  of  Christ's 
kingdom.  To  the  disciples,  therefore,  we  again  say,  there 
was  a  contrast  in  the  text  which  can  scarcely  be  said  to  ex- 
ist to  ourselves.  We  are  indeed  looking  forwards,  unless  we 
live  most  basely  below  our  privileges,  to  a  season  when,  af- 
ter a  manner  infinitely  more  glorious  than  any  which  past 
ages  have  seen,  the  presence  of  the  Redeemer  shall  be  grant- 
ed to  his  people.  We  know  that  the  Bible  hath  painted,  with 
all  the  power  of  splendid  diction,  a  period  at  which  the 
bridegroom  shall  return,  and  gathering  triumphantly  his 
elect  from  the  four  corners  of  the  earth,  unite  them  to  him- 
self in  a  visible  and  indestructible  union.  But  whilst  we  at- 
tempt no  denial  that,  ever  since  the  ascension  of  Christ,  the 
church  hath  been  placed  in  what  may  fitly  be  called  a  wi- 
dowed estate,  Ave  may  still  justly  maintain,  that  the  argu 


SPITAL    SERMON.  421 

ment,  from  contrast  which  our  text  exhibits,  was  of  local 
and  temporary  power.  We  have  Christ  with  us  in  such 
real  and  glorious  manifestations,  as  no  apostle  could  have 
conceived  of  previously  to  the  effusions  of  the  Spirit.  And 
in  place  of  that  carnal  calculation  which  would  detach  the 
head  from  the  members,  and  decide  that  no  ministrations 
can  be  rendered  to  Christ,  unless  he  move  amongst  us  in  tbe 
garniture  of  flesh,  we  have  learned  from  the  fuller  disclosures 
of  the  Gospel,  that  the  Savior  is  succored  in  the  persons  of 
his  followers,  so  that  having  the  poor  always  with  us,  we 
always  have  Christ  on  whom  to  shed  the  anointings  of  our 
love.  If  there  were  not,  then,  some  general  lessons  couched 
under  the  limited  assertion  of  the  text,  there  would  be  but 
little  in  these  words  of  Christ  to  interest  the  man  of  later  ge- 
nerations. We  could  merely  survey  them  as  possessed  ori- 
ginally of  a  plaintive  and  touching  beauty,  so  that  they  must 
have  fallen  on  the  disciples'  ears  with  all  that  melancholy 
softness  which  arrays  the  dying  words  of  those  we  best  love. 
We  could  only  regard  them  as  exquisitely  calculated  to 
thrill  through  the  hearts  of  the  hearers,  fixing,  as  they  must 
have  done,  their  thoughts  on  a  separation  which  seemed  to 
involve  the  abandonment  of  their  dearest  expectations,  and 
to  throw  to  the  ground  those  hopes  of  magnificent  empire 
which  the  miracles  of  Christ  Jesus  had  aroused  within  them. 

But  the  words  are  not  thus  to  be  confined  in  their  appli- 
cation, and  if  we  sweep  out  of  view  the  incidents  which 
give  rise  to  their  delivery,  we  may  extract  from  them  lessons 
well  suited  to  sundry  occasions,  and  to  none  more  emphati- 
cally than  to  the  present. 

We  are  assembled  to  commemorate  the  foundation  of 
certain  noble  institutions,  which  stand  amongst  the  chief  of 
those  which  shed  honor  on  the  land  of  our  birth.  And  I  see 
not  how  such  commemoration  can  be  better  effected,  or  how 
that  benevolence,  upon  which  these  illustrious  institutions 
depend,  can  be  more  encouraged  to  go  on  with  its  labors, 
than  by  our  searching  into  the  bearings  of  the  fact  that  "  the 
poor  we  have  always  with  us,"  remembering  at  the  same 
time,  that  in  ministering  to  them  for  the  love  of  Christ,  we 


422  SPITAL    SERMON. 

as  literally  minister  to  the  Redeemer  himself,  as  if  he  also 
were  always  visibly  with  us. 

The  subject  matter  of  discourse  is  thus  opened  before  us. 
I  take  the  assertion  "  ye  have  the  poor  always  with  you," 
as  one  which,  whilst  it  prophetically  asserts  the  unvarying 
continuance  of  poverty  amongst  men,  leads  us  attentively  to 
ponder  on  the  ends  which  that  continuance  subserves  ;  and 
then  I  turn  to  the  fact  that  the  head  is  always  present 
amongst  us  in  the  members,  and  use  it  as  a  motive  to  the 
support  of  establishments  which  seek  to  alleviate  distress. 

Such  are  our  two  topics  of  discourse ;  the  ends  which  the 
continuance  of  poverty  has  subserved, — the  motives  to  be- 
nevolence which  the  presence  of  Christ  supplies. 

Now  it  is  much  to  receive  an  assurance  from  the  Re- 
deemer himself  that  the  poor  we  are  always  to  have  with 
us ;  for  we  may  hence  justly  conclude  that  poverty  is  not, 
what  it  hath  been  termed,  an  unnatural  estate,  but  rather 
one  appointed  to  exist  by  the  will  of  the  Almighty.  It  hath 
ever  been  a  favorite  subject  of  popular  harangue,  that  there 
ought  to  come  an  equalization  of  the  ranks  of  society,  and 
that  the  diversity  of  condition  which  characterizes  our  spe- 
cies is  a  direct  violation  of  what  are  proudly  termed  the 
rights  of  man.  We  allow  it  to  be  most  easy  to  work  up  a 
stirring  declamation,  carrying  along  with  it  the  plaudits  of 
the  multitude,  whensoever  the  doctrine  is  propounded,  that 
one  man  possesses  the  same  natural  claims  as  another  to 
the  riches  which  Providence  hath  scattered  over  the  earth. 
The  doctrine  is  a  specious  doctrine,  but  we  hold  it  to  be  un- 
deniably an  unscriptural  doctrine.  We  hold  it  to  be  clear  to 
every  fair  student  of  the  word  of  inspiration,  that  God  hath 
irrevocably  determined  that  the  fabric  of  human  society 
shall  consist  of  successive  stages  or  platforms ;  and  that  it 
falls  never  within  the  scope  of  his  dispensations,  that  earthly 
allotments  should  be  in  any  sense  uniform.  We  are  to  have 
the  poor  always  with  us,  and  that  too  because  the  Creator 
hath  so  willed  it,  rather  than  because  the  creature  hath  in- 
troduced anomalies  into  the  system.  And  therefore  do  we 
likewise  hold,  that  every  attempt  at  equalization  is  tanta- 


SPITAL    SERMON.  423 

mount  to  direct  rebellion  against  the  appointments  of  hea- 
ven— it  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  an  effort  to  set  aside 
the  declared  purposes  of  Jehovah  ;  and  never  do  we  believe 
it  can  be  aimed  at  in  any  land,  unless  infidelity  go  first,  that 
stanch  standard-bearer  of  anarchy,  and  leap  upon  our 
altars  in  order  that  it  may  batter  at  our  thrones.  The  prin- 
ciple which  seems  now  introducing  itself  into  the  politics 
of  Europe,  and  which  is  idolized  as  the  Nebuchadnezzar 
image  of  the  day — the  principle  that  all  power  should  ema- 
nate from  the  people — may  be  hailed  and  cheered  by  the 
great  body  of  mankind  ;  but  it  is  an  unsound  principle,  for 
it  is  palpably  an  unscriptural  principle, — the  scriptural  doc- 
trine being  that  Christ  is  the  Head  of  all  rule  and  all  autho- 
rity, and  that  from  the  Head  power  is  conveyed  to  his  vice- 
gerents upon  earth :  and  I  leave  you  to  judge  (and  I  speak 
thus  out  of  reverence  to  the  Bible,  and  not  out  of  deference 
to  the  magistracy  before  whom  I  stand)  what  accordance 
there  can  be  between  this  doctrine  and  that  which  has  been 
set  up  as  the  Dagon  of  the  age,  seeing  that  the  one  makes 
power  descend  from  above,  whilst  the  other  represents  it  as 
springing  from  beneath. 

We  thus  argue,  that  seeing  it  to  be  the  appointment  of 
heaven  that  we  should  "  have  the  poor  always  with  us,"  the 
duty  of  submission  may  be  learnt  from  the  continuance  of 
poverty,  and  that  God  hath  so  mysteriously  interwoven  the 
motives  to  obedience  with  the  causes  of  dissatisfaction,  that 
a  man  must  first  brave  the  wrath  by  scorning  the  will  of  his 
Maker,  before  he  can  adventure  on  the  tearing  down  the 
institutions  of  society. 

But  there  are  other,  and  those  more  obvious  ends,  which 
this  continuance  of  poverty  hath  subserved.  Let  me  premise, 
that  although  there  is  a  broad  line  of  demarcation,  separa- 
ting the  higher  from  the  lower  classes  of  society,  the  points 
of  similarity  are  vastly  more  numerous  than  the  points  of 
distinction.  We  are  told  in  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  that  "  the 
rich  and  poor  meet  together,  the  Lord  is  the  Maker  of  them 
all."  Where  is  it,  I  pray  you,  that  they  thus  meet  ?  De- 
scended from  one  common  ancestor,  the  rich  and  poor  meet 


■1^4  SPITAL    SERMON. 

before  God  on  the  wide  level  of  total  apostasy.  This  may  be 
a  hard  doctrine,  but  nevertheless  I  would  not  that  the  ear 
should  turn  away  from  its  truth.  Intellect  doth  sever  be- 
tween man  and  man,  and  so  doth  learning,  and  outward 
honor,  and  earthly  fortune,  and  there  may  appear  no  inti- 
mate link  of  association  connecting  the  possessors  of  lofty 
genius  with  the  mass  of  dull  and  common-place  spirits,  or 
binding  together  the  great  and  the  small,  the  caressed  and 
the  despised,  the  applauded  and  the  scorned :  but  never  yet 
have  the  dreams  of  revolutionary  enthusiasm  assigned  so 
perfect  a  level  to  the  face  of  human  society,  as  that  upon 
which  its  several  members  do  actually  meet,  even  the  level 
of  original  sin, — the  level  of  a  total  incapacity  to  ward  off 
condemnation.  Aliens  from  God,  and  outcasts  from  the  light 
of  his  favor,  there  is  no  distinction  between  us  as  to  the 
moral  position  which  we  naturally  occupy ;  but  the  rich 
man  and  the  poor  man  share  alike,  the  one  not  more  and 
the  other  not  less,  in  the  ruin  which  hath  rolled  as  a  deluge 
over  our  earth. 

Yea,  and  if  they  stand  by  nature  on  the  same  level  of 
ruin,  so  are  they  placed  by  redemption  on  the  same  level  of 
restoration.  Men  have  garbled  and  mutilated  the  blessed 
Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  by  inventing  their  systems  of  exclu- 
sion, and  have  offended  as  much  against  philosophy  as 
against  theology,  by  limiting  the  effects  of  the  atonement  to 
certain  individuals.  The  Redeemer  had  indeed  human  na- 
ture, but  he  had  no  human  personality,  and  therefore  he 
redeemed  the  nature  in  itself,  and  not  this  or  that  person. 
Just  therefore  as  the  whole  race  had  fallen  in  the  first  Adam, 
so  was  the  whole  race  redeemed  or  purchased  by  the  se- 
cond ;  and  the  sun  in  its  circuits  about  this  sin-struck  globe 
shines  not  upon  the  lonely  being,  unto  whom  it  may  not  be 
said  with  all  the  force  of  a  heavenly  announcement,  for  thy 
transgressious  a  Mediator  hath  died  ! 

We  go  back  then  to  the  matter  in  hand,  and  we  contend 
that  the  points  of  similarity  between  the  rich  and  the  poor, 
are  vastly  more  numerous  than  the  points  of  distinction. 
The  Bible  supposes  them  placed  in  precisely  the  same  moral 


SP1TAL     SERMON.  425 

altitude  ;  so  that  whether  a  preacher  enter  into  a  palace  or  a 
cottage,  he  is  nothing  better  than  a  base  and  time-serving 
parasite  if  he  shape  his  message  into  different  forms — the 
Gospel  assuming  not  variety  of  tone,  just  according  as  the 
audience  may  be  the  wealthy  and  the  pampered,  or  the  indi- 
gent and  the  oppressed ;  but  speaking  unto  all  as  beings 
born  in  sin  and  shapen  in  iniquity,  and  announcing  unto 
all  the  same  free  and  glorious  tidings,  that  "  God  hath  made 
Christ  to  be  sin  for  us,  who  knew  no  sin,  that  we  might  be 
made  the  righteousness  of  God,  in  him." 

But  now  I  would  have  you  observe  from  these  premises, 
how  the  continuance  of  poverty  has  subserved  the  end  of 
displaying  the  comparative  worthlessness  of  earthly  posses- 
sions.   Men   are  placed   on  widely  different  levels  when 
viewed  as  members  of  human  society  ;  but  they  are  placed 
on  identically  the  same  level  when  regarded  as  heirs  of  im- 
mortality,— and  what  is  the  necessary  inference,  save  that 
when  eternity  is  brought  into  the  account,  the  relative  advan- 
tages of  life  become  absolutely  evanescent  ?  This  simple  fact, 
that  "  the  poor  we  have  always  with  us,"  furnishes  perpetually 
a  practical  exhibition,  such  as  might  otherwise  have  in  vain 
been  sought,  of  the  total  insignificance  of  things  the  most 
boasted,  and  the  most  prized,  and  the  most  coveted.     For 
just  suppose  a  contrary  arrangement.    Suppose  that  riches 
had  been  equally  distributed,  so  that  it  would  have  come  to 
pass  that  the  poor  we  had  not  always  with  us, — why,  then, 
it  is  clear  that  the  Gospel  must  have  been  stripped  of  that 
surprising  radiance  which  it  derives  from  overthrowing  all 
mortal  differences,  and  gathering  into  one  arena  of  naked- 
ness and  destitution  the  monarch  and  the  captive,  the  poten- 
tate and  the  beggar.     As   the  case  now  stands,  we  learn 
powerfully  the  worthlessness  of  wealth  or  honor  in  the  sight 
of  the  Creator,  by  observing  that  he  who  has  most  of  these 
must  seek  the  salvation  of  his  soul  by  precisely  the  same 
method  as  he  who  has  least — for  certainly  it  must  follow 
from  this,  that  in  the  eye  of  the  Creator  wealth  and  honor 
go  for  nothing.    But  then  it  is  the  continuance  of  poverty 
which  furnishes  this  proof,  and  conclusive  as  it  is,  we  must 
54 


426  SI'ITAL    SERMON. 

have  searched  for  it  in  vain  had  it  not  been  appointed  that 
"the  poor  we  should  have  always  with  us."  If  there  were 
any  alteration  in  this  fact,  so  that  the  ranks  of  society  became 
merged  and  equalized,  we  deny  not  that  it  would  be  equally 
true,  that  "  riches  profit  nothing  in  the  day  of  wrath  ;"  but 
we  should  not  have  possessed  the  like  ocular  demonstration 
of  the  truth  ;  we  should  have  wanted  the  display  of  contrast. 
When  all  must  be  stripped,  we  should  scarcely  observe  that 
any  were  stripped  ;  and  it  is  the  very  circumstance  that 
there  are  wide  temporal  distinctions  between  man  and  man, 
which  forces  on  our  attention  the  stupendous  truth,  that  we 
stand  on  a  par  in  the  sight  of  the  Creator,  yea,  on  the  level 
of  a  helplessness,  which  as  no  mortal  destitution  increases, 
so  neither  can  any  mortal  advantage  diminish. 

I  would  pause  for  one  moment  to  press  home  this  truth 
upon  your  consciences.  You  may  have  been  wont  to  derive 
moral  and  political  lessons  from  the  continuance  of  poverty, 
but  have  you  ever  yet  derived  this  vast  spiritual  lesson  ? 
Have  you  used  the  temporal  destitution  of  the  great  body  of 
your  fellow-creatures  as  an  overwhelming  evidence  to  your- 
selves of  the  divinity  of  salvation  ?  We  tell  you  that  it  is  an 
evidence  so  decisive  and  incontrovertible,  that  if  a  man  be 
now  puffed  up  by  secular  advantages,  and  if  he  fancy  himself 
capable  of  turning  those  advantages  into  a  machinery  for 
saving  the  soul,  he  may  be  said  to  have  closed  his  eyes  to 
the  fact,  that  "  the  poor  we  have  always  with  us" — always 
—so  that  whatever  be  the  height  to  which  civilization  at- 
tains, whatever  the  spread  of  knowledge,  whatever  the  stand- 
ard of  morality,  poverty  shall  always  continue  as  a  display  of 
the  riches  of  grace,  and  as  a  standing  memorial  that  "  not  by 
might,  nor  by  power,  but  by  my  Spirit,  saith  the  Lord  of 
Hosts,"  shall  the  work  of  salvation  be  accomplished. 

But  I  hasten  to  trace  out  certain  other  results  which  the 
continuance  of  poverty  has  produced.  There  needs  only  a 
cursory  glance  in  order  to  our  discerning,  that  the  fact  of  the 
poor  being  always  amongst  us,  has  given  free  scope  for  the 
growth  and  exercise  of  christian  graces.  I  might  take  the 
catalogue  of  excellences  which  Scripture  proposes  as  the 


SPITAL    SERMON.  427 

objects  of  our  aspirations,  and  show  you  how  each  is  cradled, 
so  to  speak,  in  the  unevenness  and  diversity  of  human  estate. 
If  I  tura,  for  example,  to  faith,  it  will  be  conceded  on  all 
hands,  that  the  unequal  distribution  of  the  good  things  of 
this  life  is  calculated  to  occasion  perplexity  to  the  pious, 
and  that  there  is  a  difficulty  of  no  slight  dimensions,  in  re- 
conciling, the  varieties  of  mortal  allotments  with  the  rigid 
equity  of  God's  moral  government.  We  can  master  the  diffi- 
culty by  no  other  process,  save  that  of  referring  to  the  season 
when  all  the  concerns  of  the  universe  shall  be  wound  up, 
and  when,  by  a  most  august  developement,  the  Judge,  who 
sits  on  the  great  white  throne,  shall  unravel  the  secrecies  of 
every  dispensation.  But  it  is  the  province  of  faith,  and  that 
too  of  faith  when  in  keenest  exercise,  thus  to  meet  the  dis- 
crepancies of  the  present  by  a  bold  appeal  to  the  decisions  of 
the  future.  And  if  it  should  come  to  pass  that  there  were 
no  discrepancies,  which  would  be  comparatively  effected  if 
the  poor  ceased  from  amongst  us  ;  then  who  perceives  not 
that  this  province  of  faith  would  be  sensibly  circumscribed  ? 
The  problem  with  which  it  is  now  most  arduous  to  grapple, 
and  by  the  grappling  with  which  faith  is  upheld  in  its  vigor 
— the  problem,  wherefore  does  a  merciful  Creator  leave  in 
wretched  destitution  so  many  of  his  creatures — this  would 
be  necessarily  taken  out  of  our  investigation — we  should  be 
girt  about  with  the  appearance  of  equable  dealings  in  this 
life,  and  should  seldom  therefore  be  thrown  for  explanations 
on  the  mysteries  of  the  next.  And  I  know  not  what  conse- 
quence can  be  more  evident,  than  that  a  huge  field  would 
thus  be  closed  against  the  exercises  of  faith,  a  field  which  is 
formed  in  its  length  and  in  its  breadth  out  of  verification  of 
our  text,  that  "  the  poor  we  have  always  with  us." 

But  yet  further.  If  there  were  to  be  no  longer  any  poor, 
then  it  is  evident  that  each  one  amongst  us  would  be  in  pos- 
session of  a  kind  of  moral  certainty  that  he  should  never 
become  poor.  Poverty  would  be  removed  from  the  number 
of  possible  human  conditions,  and  there  would  be  an  end  at 
once  to  those  incessant  and  tremendous  fluctuations  which 
oftentimes  dash  the  prosperous  on  the  rocks  and  the  quick- 


428  SPITAL    SERMON. 

sands.  But  now  mark  how,  with  the  departure  of  the  risk 
of  adversity,  would  depart  also  the  meekness  of  our  depend- 
ance  on  the  Almighty.  We  might  instantly  remove  one 
petition  from  our  prayers,  "  give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread." 
If  we  Avere  secure  against  poverty,  which  we  should  be  if 
poverty  had  ceased  from  the  earth,  there  would  be  some- 
thing of  mockery  in  soliciting  supplies,  whose  continuance 
was  matter  of  certainty  ;  and  thus,  by  placing  man  out  of 
the  reach  of  destitution,  you  would  go  far  to  annihilate  all 
those  motives  to  simple  reliance  which  are  furnished  by  the 
vacillations  of  human  condition  ;  you  would  destroy  that 
liveliness  which  is  now  the  result  of  momentary  exercise : 
and  we  once  more  contend,  that  for  the  delicacy  of  its 
minute,  just  as  well  as  for  the  magnificence  of  its  more  ex- 
tended, operations,  faith  is  mainly  indebted  to  the  fact,  that 
"  the  poor  we  have  always  with  us." 

I  go  on  to  observe,  of  how  much  beauty  we  should  strip 
the  Gospel,  if  we  stripped  the  world  of  poverty.  It  is  one  of 
the  prime  and  distinguishing  features  of  the  character  of 
Deity,  as  revealed  to  us  in  Scripture,  that  the  poor  man,  just 
as  well  as  the  rich  man,  is  the  object  of  his  watchfulness  : 
that,  with  an  attention  undistracted  by  the  multiplicity  of 
complex  concernments,  he  bows  himself  down  to  the  cry  of 
the  meanest  outcast ;  so  that  there  is  not  a  smile  upon  a  poor 
man's  cheek,  and  there  is  not  a  tear  in  a  poor  man's  eye, 
which  passes  any  more  unheeded  by  our  God,  than  if  the 
individual  were  a  monarch  on  his  throne,  and  thousands 
crouched  in  vassalage  before  him.  We  allow  that  when 
thought  has  busied  itself  in  traversing  the  circuits  of  crea- 
tion, shooting  rapidly  from  one  to  another  of  those  sparkling 
systems  which  crowd  immensity,  and  striving  to  scrutinize 
the  ponderous  mechanism  of  a  universe,  each  department  of 
which  is  full  of  the  harmonies  of  glorious  order,— we  allow 
that,  after  so  sublime  a  research,  it  is  difficult  to  bring  down 
the  mind  to  the  belief,  that  the  affairs  of  an  individual,  and 
seemingly  insignificant  race,  are  watched  over  with  as  care- 
ful a  solicitude  as  if  that  race  were  the  sole  tenant  of  infinite 
space,  and  this  our  globe  as  much  covered  by  the  wing  of 


SPITAL    SERMON.  429 

the  Omnipotent,  as  if  it  had  no  associates  in  wheeling  round 
his  throne.  Yet  when  even  this  belief  is  attained,  the  con- 
templation has  not  risen  to  one  half  of  its  augustness.  We 
must  break  up  the  race  piecemeal, — we  must  take  man  by 
man,  and  woman  by  woman,  and  child  by  child, — we  must 
observe  that  to  no  two  individuals  are  there  assigned  circum- 
stances in  every  respect  similar  ;  but  that  each  is  a  kind  of 
world  by  himself,  with  his  own  allotments,  his  own  trials, 
his  own  mercies  :  and  then  only  do  we  reach  the  climax  of 
what  is  beautiful  and  strange,  when  we  parcel  out  our  spe- 
cies into  its  separate  units,  and  decide  that  not  one  of  these 
units  is  overlooked  by  the  Almighty ;  but  that  just  as  it  is 
the  same  hand  which  paints  the  enamel  of  a  flower  and 
guides  the  rolling  of  a  plant,  so  it  is  the  same  guardianship 
which  regulates  the  rise  and  fall  of  empires,  and  leads  the 
most  unknown  individual,  when  he  goeth  forth  to  seek  his 
daily  bread.  Now  who  perceives  not  that,  by  removing  the 
poor  altogether  from  amongst  us,  we  should  greatly  obscure 
this  amazing  exhibition  ?  The  spectacle  which  is  most  cal- 
culated to  arrest  us,  and  to  fill  the  vision  with  touching  de- 
lineations of  Deity,  is  that  of  earthly  destitution  gilded  by  the 
sunshine  of  celestial  consolation, — the  spectacle  of  a  child 
of  want  and  misfortune,  laden  with  all  those  ills  which  were 
bequeathed  to  man  by  a  rebellious  ancestry,  and  neverthe- 
less sustained  by  so  elastic  and  unearthly  a  vigor,  that  he 
can  walk  cheerily  through  the  midst  of  trouble,  and  main- 
tain a  deep  and  rich  tranquillity,  whilst  the  hurricane  is 
beating  furiously  upon  him.  But,  comparatively,  there  could 
be  no  such  spectacle  if  there  came  an  end  to  the  appoint- 
ment, that  the  poor  we  have  always  with  us.  Take  away 
poverty,  and  a  veil  is  thrown  over  the  perfections  of  the 
Godhead  ;  for  we  could  not  know  our  Maker  in  the  fullness 
of  his  compassions,  if  we  knew  him  not  as  a  helper  in  the 
extremities  of  mortal  desertion.  It  is  given  as  one  of  the  at- 
testations of  the  Messias-ship  of  Jesus,  that  "  unto  the  poor 
the  Gospel  was  preached  ;"  and  we  conclude  from  this,  as 
well  as  from  the  features  of  the  Gospel  in  itself,  that  there  is 
a  peculiar  adaptation  in  the  messages  of  the  Bible  to  the  cir- 


430 


SPITAL    SERMON. 


cumstances  of  those  who  have  but  little  of  this  world's  goods. 
And  what  need  is  there  of  argument  to  prove,  that  never 
does  this  Gospel  put  on  an  aspect  of  greater  loveliness,  than 
when  it  addresses  itself  to  the  outcast  and  the  destitute  ? 
One  might  almost  have  thought  that  it  had  been  framed  for 
the  express  purpose  of  ministering  to  the  happiness  of  the 
poor.  Unto  the  men,  indeed,  of  every  station  it  delivers  pre- 
cepts which  may  regulate  their  duties,  and  promises  which 
may  nerve  them  to  their  discharge  ;  but  then  it  is  that  the 
Gospel  appears  under  its  most  radiant  form,  when  it  enters 
the  hovel  of  the  peasant,  and  lights  up  that  hovel  with  glad- 
ness, and  fans  the  cheek  of  the  sick  man  with  angels'  wings, 
and  causes  the  crust  of  bread  and  the  cruse  of  water  to  be 
received  as  a  banquet  of  luxury,  and  brings  into  the  wretched 
chamber  such  a  retinue  of  ministering  spirits,  that  he  whom 
his  fellow-men  have  loathed  and  abandoned,  rises  into  the 
dignity  of  a  being  whom  the  Almighty  delighted  to  honor. 
Oh,  verily,  the  brilliant  triumph  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  is  won  from  the  career  of  a  man  who  professes 
godliness  in  poverty.  The  world  despises  him,  but  he  is 
lifted  above  the  world,  and  sits  in  heavenly  places  with 
Christ :  he  has  none  of  the  treasures  of  the  earth,  but  the 
pearl  of  great  price  he  hath  made  his  own  :  hunger  and 
thirst  he  may  be  compelled  to  endure,  but  there  is  hidden 
manna  of  which  he  eats,  and  there  are  living  streams  of 
which  he  drinks :  he  is  worn  down  by  perpetual  toil,  and 
yet  he  hath  already  entered  into  rest,—"  persecuted,  but  not 
forsaken  ;  cast  down,  but  not  destroyed."  Make  poverty  as 
hideous  as  it  can  ever  be  made  by  the  concentration  of  a 
hundred  woes,— let  it  be  a  torn,  and  degraded,  and  scorned, 
and  reviled  estate,— still  can  he  be  poor  of  whom  it  is  said, 
that  "  all  things  are  his —the  world,  or  life,  or  death,  or 
things  present,  or  things  to  come,— all  are  his,  for  he  is 
Christ's,  and  Christ  is  God's  ?"  We  call  this  the  brilliant 
triumph  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ ;  a  triumph  from  the  study 
of  which  may  be  gathered  the  finest  lessons  of  Christianity  ; 
a  triumph  over  all  with  which  it  is  hardest  for  religion  to 
grapple.    And  if  it  be  a  stupendous  characteristic  of  the  Gos- 


spital  SBRiaoar.  431 

pel,  that  it  adapts  itself  to  every  possible  emergency,  that  it 
provides  largely  for  all  the  exigencies  of  human  beings  :  and 
if  it  be  moreover  true,  that  certain  graces  are  peculiarly  ex- 
ercised by  poverty,  which  would  be  comparatively  uncalled 
for  amid  the  comforts  of  affluence,  then  Ave  may  fairly  make 
it  matter  of  thanksgiving  to  God,  that  "  the  poor  we  have 
always  with  us,"  seeing  that  if  they  had  ceased  from  amongst 
us,  half  the  glories  of  revelation  must  have  been  shut  up  in 
darkness,  and  the  magnificence  of  the  power  of  the  Gospel 
would  never  have  been  measured,  and  the  loveliness  of  the 
influences  of  the  Gospel  never  been  estimated. 

But  it  is  time  that  I  gather  to  a  close  this  survey  of  the 
ends  which  the  continuance  of  poverty  has  subserved,  and  I 
shall  therefore  only  add  one  more  to  the  catalogue,  but  that 
especially  connected  with  the  occasion  of  this  our  assem- 
bling.   The  distinction  of  society  into  the  poor  and  rich,  in-' 
troduces  a  large  class  of  relative  duties,  which  would  have 
no  existence,  if  "  the  poor  were  not  always  amongst  us." 
It  cannot  be  called  an  overcharged  picture,  if  I  declare  that 
the  removal  of  poverty  would  go  far  towards  debasing  and 
uncivilizing  Christendom  ;  and  that  a  sudden  and  uniform 
distribution  of  wealth  would  throw  us  centuries  back  in  the 
march  of  moral  improvement.     The  great  beauty  of  that 
state  of  things  which  our  text  depicts  is,  that  men  are  depen- 
dent one  upon  the  other,  and  that  occasions  perpetually  pre- 
sent themselves  which  call  into  exercise  the  charities  of  life. 
We  need  only  remind  you  of  the  native  selfishness  of  the 
human  heart,  a  selfishness  which  is  never  completely  eradi- 
cated, but  which,  after  years  of  patient  resistance,  will  creep 
in  and  deform  the  most  disinterested  generosity.    And  we 
ask  you  whether,— so  far  at  least  as  our  arithmetic  is  capable 
of  computing,— this  selfishness  would  not  have  reigned  well 
nigh  unmolested,  had  the  world  been  quite  cleared  of  spec- 
tacles of  destitution,  and  if  each  man  had  been  left  without 
calls  to  assist  his  brethren,  seeing  that  his  brethren  were  in 
possession  of  advantages  setting  them  free  from  all  need  of 
assistance  ?    According  to  the  present  constitution,  men  are 
necessarily  brought  into  collision  with  distress;  and  the 


432  SPITAL    SERMON, 

effect  of  the  coutact  is  to  soften  down  those  asperities  winch 
deform  the  natural  character,  and  to  plane  away  that  rug- 
gedness  which  marks  the  surface  of  the  untrodden  rock. 
But  if  there  had  been  no  physical  wretchedness  with  which 
such  collision  could  take  place,  then  it  appears  to  me  evident 
that  selfishness  would  have  been  left  to  grow  up  into  a  giant 
stature,  and  that  the  granite  of  the  soul,  which,  though  hard, 
may  be  chiselled,  would  have  turned  into  adamant,  and  de- 
fied all  impressions. 

Let  the  poor  be  no  longer  amongst  us,  and  you  dry  up,  so 
far  as  we  can  judge,  the  scanty  fountains  of  sympathy  which 
still  bubble  in  the  desert.  By  removing  exciting  causes  of 
compassion,  you  would  virtually  sweep  away  all  kindliness 
from  the  earth  ;  and  by  making  the  children  of  men  inde- 
pendent on  each  other,  you  would  wrap  up  every  one  in  his 
own  passions  and  his  own  pursuits,  and  send  him  out  to  be 
alone  in  a  multitude,  and  thus  reduce  the  creatures  of  the 
same  species  into  so  many  centres  of  repulsion,  scornfully 
withstanding  the  approaches  of  companionship.  There  is 
no  aspect  under  which  our  text  can  be  presented  more 
worthy  of  your  serious  contemplation  than  this.  The  rela- 
tive duties,  of  which  poverty  is  the  parent,  are  those  whose 
discharge  is  most  humanizing  to  the  rich,  and  at  the  same 
time  most  edifying  to  the  poor.  The  higher  classes  of  society 
are  naturally  tempted  to  look  down  upon  the  lower,  and  the 
lower  are  as  naturally  tempted  to  envy  the  higher  ;  so  that 
the  distinctions  of  rank  make  way  for  the  trial  of  humility 
in  one  case  and  of  contentment  in  the  other.  But  if  there  be 
truth  in  this  reasoning  ;  if  there  be  a  direct  tendency  in  the 
mixture  of  various  conditions  to  the  smoothing  the  roughness 
of  the  human  spirit,  and  to  the  cherishing  of  virtues  most 
essential  to  our  well-being ;  then  may  we  not  once  more 
call  upon  you  to  admire  the  wisdom  of  the  Almighty's  dis- 
pensations, inasmuch  as  it  is  appointed  by  the  purposes  of 
heaven,  that  we  should  ':have  the  poor  always  amongst  us?" 

Now,  having  traced  certain  of  the  ends  which  are  deci- 
dedly subserved  by  the  continuance  of  poverty,  it  remains 
that  I  speak  briefly  on  our  other  topics  of  discourse.    I  may 


SPITAL    SERMON.  433 

observe  that  the  consideration  suggested  in  the  second  clause 
of  our  text  follows,  with  great  force,1  on  the  review  in  which 
we  have  been  engaged.  There  is  a  moral  benefit  conferred 
upon  society  by  our  having  "the  poor  always  with  us  ;"  but 
if  we  further  remember,  that  Christ  is  with  us  in  the  persons 
of  his  destitute  brethren,  so  that  in  ministering  to  them  we 
minister  to  him,  then  the  varieties  of  mortal  estate  pass  be- 
fore us  under  a  spiritual  aspect,  and  we  find  in  poverty  a 
storehouse  of  the  motives  of  Christianity. 

It  is  here  that  I  take  my  stand,  with  a  view  to  the  duty 
now  intrusted  to  my  care.  The  noble  institutions  which  I 
am  required  to  recommend  to  your  continued  support,  are 
so  many  monuments  of  the  truth  that  "  the  poor  we  have 
always  with  us."  I  trust  I  may  add,  that  the  careful  and 
liberal  patronage  which  they  have  hitherto  received,  has 
emanated  from  a  sense  of  love  to  the  Redeemer ;  and  that 
the  zeal  with  which  they  shall  hereafter  be  upheld,  will 
flow  from  no  inferior  origin.  He  who  endows  a  hospital, 
thinking  to  win  favor  with  God  through  this  his  munifi- 
cence, rears,  like  the  Egyptian  monarchs,  a  pyramid  for  his 
sepulchre,  but  leaves  his  soul  without  one  secret  chamber 
wherein  she  may  be  safe  from  the  sleet  of  eternal  indigna- 
tion. We  would  press  this  matter  upon  you  with  all  the 
fidelity  that  its  importance  demands.  The  soul  is  not  to  be 
saved  by  any,  the  most  costly,  giving  of  alms.  Sea  and 
land  may  be  compassed,  and  the  limbs  be  macerated  by 
penance,  and  the  strength  worn  down  by  painful  attrition, 
and  the  wealth  be  lavished  in  feeding  the  hungry,  and 
clothing  the  naked  ;  and,  nevertheless,  the  wrath  of  God 
be  no  more  averted  than  if  the  life  were  passed  in  bold  con- 
tempt of  his  name  and  attributes.  "  Other  foundation  can  no 
man  lay  than  that  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus  Christ ;"  and  they 
who  have  entered  heaven,  climbed  that  lofty  eminence,  not 
by  piles  of  gold  and  silver  which  they  consecrated  to  Jeho- 
vah,— not  by  accumulated  deeds  of  legal  obedience, — but 
simply  by  the  cross  of  the  Redeemer,  putting  faith  in  the 
blood  and  righteousness  of  Him  "  who  died,  the  just  for  the 
unjust,  that  he  might  bring  us  unto  God." 
55 


434  SP1TAL    SERMON, 

But  when  the  heart  is  occupied  by  this  heaven-born  prin- 
ciple of  faith,  there  will  be  an  immediate  kindling  of  love 
towards  the  Author  of  redemption ;  and  works  of  benevo- 
lence, which  sit  as  an  incubus  on  the  soul  so  long  as  they 
are  accounted  meritorious,  will  be  wrought  as  the  natural 
produce  of  a  grateful  and  devoted  affection.  If  there  be  in- 
deed within  us  the  love  of  Him  who  hath  loved  us  and  given 
himself  for  us,  then  shall  we  be  eager  to  support  the  founda- 
tions of  a  God-fearing  ancestry,  not  through  the  bloated  and 
deceitful  expectation  that  the  glories  of  futurity  are  to  be 
purchased  by  attention  to  the  necessitous,  but  simply  in  con- 
formity with  the  apostolical  maxim,  "  Beloved,  if  God  so 
loved  us,  we  ought  also  to  love  one  another." 

The  poor  we  have  always  with  us,  and  thus  have  we 
always  abounding  opportunities  of  testifying  our  dedication 
to  Him  who  is  brought  near  by  faith,  though  removed  from 
sight,  and  who  hath  linked  himself  in  ties  of  such  close 
brotherhood  with  mankind  that  he  sympathizes  with  the 
meanest  of  the  race.  Upon  the  platform  of  love  to  the  Re- 
deemer do  we  take  our  stand,  when  recommending  to  your 
generous  care  those  several  Hospitals  whose  institution  it  is 
the  business  of  this  day's  service  to  commemorate.  I  shall 
pause  while  the  report  of  their  proceedings  during  the  past 
year  is  read  to  you,  and  then  wind  up  my  discourse  by  a 
brief  exposition  of  their  claims  upon  public  benevolence. 


Various  and  multiform  are  the  ills  which  the  charities, 
whose  report  you  have  now  heard,  set  themselves  to  alle- 
viate. The  burden  of  poverty  is  sufficiently  heavy,  even 
whilst  the  animal  frame  is  not  wasted  by  the  inroads  of  sick- 
ness. But  when  disease  hath  laid  its  hand  upon  the  body; 
and  the  strength  is  fretted  by  pining  maladies,  then  espe- 
cially it  is  that  penury  is  hard  to  bear ;  and  the  man  who 
has  wrestled  bravely  against  want,  whilst  there  was  vigor  in 
his  limbs  and  play  in  his  muscles,  sinks  down  wearied  and 


SPITAL    SERMON.  r  435 

im- 


disconsolate,  when  the  organs  of  life  are  clogged  and  .. 
peded.    Who  would  refuse  to  stretch  out  the  hand  of  kind- 
ness, succoring  the  afflicted  in  this  their  hour  of  aggravated 
bitterness?    Who  could  be  callous  enough  to  the  woes  of 
humanity,  to  be  slow  in  providing  that  all  which  the  skill 
and  the  wisdom  of  man  can  effect,  towards  lightening  the 
pressure  of  sickness,  may  be  placed  within  the  reach  of  "those 
who  must  otherwise  waste  away  in  unmitigated  suffering? 
Who,  in  short,  could  be  bold  enough  to  call  himself  a  man, 
and  yet  give  himself  up  to  a  churlish  indifference   as  to 
whether  the  pains  of  his  destitute  brethren  were  assuaged 
by  the  arts  of  medical  science,  or  whether  those  brethren 
were  left  to  the  gnawings  of  racking  disease,  with  no  pillow 
for  the  aching  head,  with  no  healing  draught  for  the  writh- 
ing emaciated  frame  ?    One  malady  there  is— the  greatest,  I 
may  call  it,  to  which  flesh  is  heir,  the  unhappy  subjects  of 
which  have  a  more  than  common  claim  on  benevolence.   It 
is  much  that  accident  and  sickness  should  befall  the  body ; 
but  the  climax  of  affliction  is  not  reached  until  the  mind 
itself  is  out  of  joint.     So  long  as  the  soul  retains  possession 
of  her  capacities,  man,  however  assaulted,  however  agonized, 
falls  not  from  his  rank  in  the  scale  of  creation,  but  rather,  by 
displaying  the  superiority  of  the  immortal  over  the  mortal, 
proves  himself  the  denizen  of  a  mightier  sphere.     Man  is,' 
then,  most  illustrious  and  most  dignified,  when  his  spiritual 
part  rises  up  unshattered  amid  the  ruins  of  the  corporeal, 
and  gives  witness  of  destinies  coeval  with  eternity,  by  show- 
ing an  independence  on  the  corrodings  of  time.    But  when 
the  battery  of  attack  has  been  turnedupon  the  mind,  when 
reason  has  been  assaulted  and  hurled  from  her  throne,  oh  ! 
then  it  is  that  the  spectacle  of  human  distress  is  one  upon 
which  even  the  beings  of  a  higher  intelligence  than  our 
own  may  look  sadly  and  pitifully;  for  the  link  of  commu- 
nion with  the  long  hereafter  seems  thus  almost  dissevered, 
and  that  pledge  of  an  unbounded  duration,— a  pledge  of 
which  no  bodily  decay  can  spoil  us-a  pledge  which  is  won 
by  the  soul  out  of  the  breakings-up  of  bone  and  sinew— for 
a  while  is  torn  away  from  man,  and  he  remains  the  fearful 


436  SPITAL    SERMON. 

nondescript  of  creation,  dust  lit  up  Deity,  and  yet  Deity  lost 
in  dust. 

Ye  cannot  be  lukewarm  in  the  support  of  an  institution 
which,  like  one  of  those  whose  foundation  we  are  met  to 
commemorate,  throws  open  its  gates  to  the  subjects  of  this 
worst  of  calamities,  and  it  were  to  transgress  the  due  bounds 
of  my  office,  if  I  should  insist  further  on  the  claims  of  those 
Hospitals  which  have  been  reared  for  the  purpose  of  miti- 
gating the  ills  attendant  on  bodily  or  mental  disease. 

But  as  the  citizens  of  a  great  metropolis,  you  have  a  duty 
to  perform  in  watching  the  moral  health  of  an  overgrown  po- 
pulation. It  becomes  you  to  apply  wholesome  correctives  to 
a  spreading  dissolution  of  manners,  and  to  adopt  such  pro- 
cesses in  dealing  with  the  vicious  and  disorderly,  as  seem 
best  calculated  to  arrest  the  contagion.  There  would  be  a 
grievous  deficiency  in  the  establishment  of  this  gigantic  city, 
if  it  numbered  not  amongst  its  hospitals,  one  especially  set 
apart  to  the  reception  of  the  vagrant  and  the  dissolute.  The 
beginnings  of  crime  must  be  diligently  checked,  if  we  wish 
to  preserve  soundness  in  our  population  ;  and  the  best  legis- 
lation is  that  which,  by  dealing  strenuously  with  minor  of- 
fences, employs  the  machinery  most  calculated  to  prevent 
the  commission  of  greater. 

But  I  turn  gladly  to  the  claims  of  an  institution  which  can 
need  no  advocacy  from  the  preacher's  lips,  seeing  that  the 
objects  who  are  sheltered  beneath  its  munificent  protection, 
surround  me,  and  plead  eloquently,  though  silently,  their  own 
cause.  Founded  and  fostered  by  the  princes  of  the  land,  the 
hospital,  which  bears  the  name  of  Him  who  died  as  our 
surety,  constitutes  one  of  the  prime  ornaments  of  this  empo- 
rium of  wealth  and  greatness.  Equalled  by  no  other  insti- 
tution in  the  number  of  those  for  whose  education  and  main- 
tenance it  provides,  and  excelled  by  none  in  the  soundness 
of  the  learning  which  it  communicates,  I  pass  not  the  strict- 
ness of  truth  when  I  affirm,  that  he  who  would  exhibit  the 
splendor  of  British  philanthropy  should  take  his  station  in 
this  pulpit,  and  point  to  the  right  hand  and  to  the  left.  We 
have  here  a  large  multitude  of  the  rising  generation  trained 


SPITAL    SERMON.  437 

up  in  those  principles  which  are  calculated,  under  God's 
blessing,  to  make  them  valuable  members  of  the  community  ; 
and  such  is  the  course  of  their  education,  that  whilst  many 
are  fitted  to  fill  stations  in  the  various  departments  of  trade, 
others  are  prepared  for  the  higher  studies  of  a  university, 
and  thus  introduced  to  the  most  solemn  occupations  of  life. 
Who  can  behold  such  a  number  of  his  fellow-creatures,  each 
with  the  dew  of  his  youth  just  fresh  upon  him,  and  not  re- 
joice that  the  early  years  of  their  lives  are  thus  shielded  and 
cherished  ?  Who  can  remark  how  each  bears  upon  his 
breast  these  animating  words,  "  He  is  risen,"  and  not  desire 
that  these  young  heirs  of  immortality  may  grow  up  into 
manhood,  rooted  in  the  faith  of  Him  who  is  "  the  Resurrec- 
tion and  the  Life,"  and  showing  that  they  themselves  are 
"  risen  with  Christ,"  by  "  seeking  those  things  which  are 
above,  where  Christ  sitteth  at  the  right  hand  of  God  ?"  The 
snows  of  a  polar  winter  must  rest  upon  the  heart  which 
throbs  not  with  emotion  at  surveying  so  many  born  in  trou- 
blous times,  who,  with  all  the  airy  expectancies  of  youthful 
and  untried  spirits,  must  go  out  into  the  walks  of  society,  in 
days  when  they  are  more  than  commonly  swept  by  the 
chilling  blights  of  scepticism  and  vice. 

Unnecessary  though  I  deem  it  to  dwell  at  any  length  on 
the  duty  of  supporting  this  venerable  establishment,  yet 
would  I  speak  aifectionately  to  you  who  are  its  inmates, 
and  conjure  you,  "  if  there  be  any  virtue,  and  if  there  be 
any  praise,"  to  "  remember  your  Creator  in  the  days  of 
your  youth."  Whilst  you  are  still  strangers  to  the  seduc- 
tions of  an  ensnaring  world,  I  would  warn  you  against  the 
evils  which  will  gird  you  round  when  you  go  forth  from 
the  peaceful  asylum  of  your  childhood,  and  mix,  as  you 
unavoidably  must,  with  those  who  lie  in  wait  to  destroy 
the  unwary.  I  would  tell  you  that  there  is  no  happiness 
but  in  the  fear  of  the  Almighty  ;  that  if  you  would  so  pass 
through  life  as  not  to  tremble  and  quail  at  the  approach 
of  death,  make  it  your  morning  and  your  evening  prayer, 
that  the  Holy  Spirit  may  take  possession  of  your  souls,  and 
lead  you  so  to  love  the  Lord  Jesus  in  sincerity,  that  you 


433 


SPITAL    SERMON. 


may  not  be  allured  from  the  holiness  of  religion  by  any  of 
the  devices  of  a  wicked  generation.  Ye  read  in  your  classi- 
cal stories  of  a  monarch  who  wept  as  his  countless  army 
passed  before  him,  staggered  by  the  thought,  that  yet  a  few 
years,  and  those  stirring  hosts  would  lie  motionless  in  the 
chambers  of  the  grave.  Might  not  a  christian  minister  weep 
over  you,  as  he  gazes  on  the  freshness  of  your  days,  and  con- 
siders that  it  is  but  too  possible,  that  you  may  hereafter  give 
ear  to  the  scorner  and  the  seducer.  Thus  might  the  buds 
of  early  promise  be  nipped  ;  and  it  might  come  to  pass,  that 
you,  the  children,  it  may  be,  of  pious  parents,  over  whose 
infancy  a  godly  father  may  have  watched,  and  whose  open- 
ing hours  may  have  been  guarded  by  the  tender  solicitudes 
of  a  righteous  mother,  would  entail  on  yourselves  a  heritage 
of  shame,  and  go  down  at  the  judgment  into  the  pit  of  the 
unbeliever  and  the  profligate.  Let  this  warning  word  be  re- 
membered by  you  all  :  it  is  simple  enough  for  the  youngest, 
it  is  important  enough  for  the  eldest.  You  cannot  begin  too 
soon  to  serve  the  Lord,  but  you  may  easily  put  it  off  too 
long  ;  and  the  thing  which  will  be  least  regretted  when  you 
come  to  die  is,  that  you  gave  the  first  days  of  existence  to 
preparation  for  heaven. 

But  I  refrain  from  enlarging  further.  I  have  touched 
briefly  on  the  respective  claims  to  support  of  those  noble  in- 
stitutions which  have  been  founded  amongst  us  by  the  piety 
of  our  forefathers :  I  add  only  that  the  times  in  which  we 
live  are  full  of  perplexity  and  danger.  The  nations  of  the 
world  heave  and  swell  like  the  waters  of  a  stormy  ocean. 
There  is  going  forth  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  the 
earth  a  restless  and  a  revolutionary  spirit ;  and  these,  our 
islands,  which  have  hitherto  been  curtained  by  the  wing  of 
an  especial  protection,  seem  not  altogether  unvisited  by  the 
perils  which  weave  themselves  around  other  lands.  What 
then  shall  we  do  but  arise  in  the  strength  of  the  Lord,  and 
give  ourselves  strenuously  to  every  labor  which  may  im- 
prove the  moral  and  physical  condition  of  our  people,  and 
strive,  as  befits  those  who  are  alive  to  the  startling  aspect  of 
the  world,  so  to  surround  ourselves  with  the  machinerv  of 


SPI-TAI    SERMON.  439 

christian  benevolence,  that  we  may  repel  the  aggressions  of 
infidel  hardihood?  Let  there  be  no  closing  our  eyes  to  the 
difficulties  by  which  we  are  environed ;  let  there  be  no 
giving  ear  to  the  unhallowed  speculations  of  a  specious 
liberalism,  which  would  show  us  new  ways  to  national 
greatness  and  national  renown,  over  the  wreck  of  all  that 
hath  been  held  most  sacred  by  our  ancestry.  If  England 
wish  to  preserve  her  might  amongst  the  nations,  let  her  sons 
and  her  daughters  confess  their  transgressions  and  repent 
them  of  their  sins  ;  let  covetousness — the  curse  and  darling 
of  commercial  cities,  be  abhorred,  and  lust  renounced,  and 
ambition  mortified,  and  every  bold  working  of  impiety 
chased  from  amongst  them  ;  and  let  them,  covered  with  the 
sackcloth  of  deep  humiliation,  bind  themselves  in  a  holy 
league  for  the  advancement  of  the  purposes  of  an  enlarged 
philanthropy.  Then,  and  not  till  then,  may  the  hope  be 
cherished,  that  the  political  hurricanes  which  shake  the 
dynasties  of  Europe,  shall  leave  unscathed  our  island  sove- 
reignty ;  and  that  whilst  the  rushing  of  a  wrathful  deluge 
dash  away  the  land-marks  of  foreign  states,  Britain  may  lift 
her  white  cliffs  above  the  surges,  and  rise  amid  the  eddies 
like  Mount  Ararat  from  out  the  flood.  "  The  poor  you  have 
always  with  you  :"  meet  their  spiritual  and  temporal  neces- 
sities with  the  alacrity  and  zeal  which  become  the  followers 
of  Christ ;  be  yourselves  men  of  prayer,  and,  so  far  as  your 
influence  extends,  lead  others  to  wrestle  with  the  Almighty ; 
and  then,  oh  tell  us  not  that  England's  greatness  hath  touch- 
ed its  zenith  :  ask  us  not  for  the  lament  which  may  be 
wailed  over  her  departed  majesty,— home  of  mercy,  home  of 
piety,  thou  shalt  still  continue  the  home  of  plenty,  the  home 
of  peace ;  the  sunshine  of  heaven's  choice  favor  shall  sleep 
upon  thy  fields,  and  the  blithe  music  of  contentment  be 
heard  in  thy  valleys ;  for  "  happy  is  that  people  that  is  in 
such  a  case,  yea,  blessed  is  that  people  whose  God  is  the 
Lord." 


THE  DIVINE  PATIENCE  EXHAUSTED  THROUGH 
THE  MAKING  VOID  THE  LAW. 


Pbalm  119  :  126,  127. 

"  It  is  time  for  thee,  Lord,  to  work :  for  they  have  made  void  thy 
law.  Therefore  I  love  thy  commandments  above  gold ;  yea,  above 
fine  gold." 


56 


SERMON. 


THE     DIVINE     PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED    THROUGH    THE 
MAKING  VOID  THE  LAW. 


It  is  time  for  thee,  Lord,  to  work  -.  for  they  have  made  void  thy  law. 
Therefore  I  love  thy  commandments  above  gold ;  yea,  above  fine 
sold."— Psalm  119  :  126,  127. 


There  is  no  property  of  the  divine  nature  which  demands 
more,  whether  of  our  admiration  or  of  our  gratitude,  than 
long-suffering.  That  the  Lord  is  "  slow  to  anger  " — there  is 
more  in  this  to  excite  both  wonder  and  praise,  than  in  those 
other  truths  with  which  it  is  associated  by  the  prophet  Na- 
hum.  "  The  Lord  is  slow  to  anger,  and  great  in  power,  and 
will  not  at  all  acquit  the  wicked  :  the  Lord  hath  his  way  in 
the  whirlwind  and  in  the  storm,  and  the  clouds  are  the  dust 
of  his  feet."  We  have  often  told  you  that  the  long-suffering 
of  God  is  wonderful,  because  it  indicates  the  putting  con- 
straint on  his  own  attributes ;  it  is  omnipotence  exerted 
over  the  Omnipotent  himself. 

So  far  as  our  own  interests  are  concerned,  you  will  readily 
admit  that  we  are  extraordinarily  indebted  to  the  divine 
forbearance.  Those  of  us  who  are  now  walking  the  path  of 
life,  where  would  they  have  been,  had  not  God  borne  long 
with  them,  refusing,  as  it  were,  to  be  wearied  out  by  their 
perversity  ?  Those  who  are  yet  "  strangers  from  £he  cove- 
nant of  promise,"  to  what  but  the  patience  of  their  Maker  is 
it  owing,  that  they  have  not  been  cut  down  as  cumberers  of 
the  ground,  but  still  stand  within  the  possibilities  of  forgive- 


444  THE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED 

ness  and  acceptance  ?  But  it  is  a  melancholy  thing  that  we 
are  compelled  to  add,  that  there  is  a  great  tendency  in  all  of 
us  to  the  abusing  God's  long-suffering,  and  to  the  so  pre- 
suming on  his  forbearance  as  to  continue  in  sin.  We  may 
be  sure  that  a  vast  outward  reformation  would  be  wrought 
on  the  world,  if  there  were  a  sudden  change  in  God's  deal- 
ings, so  that  punishment  followed  instantaneously  on  crime. 
If  the  Almighty  were  to  mark  out  certain  offences,  the  per- 
petration of  which  he  would  immediately  visit  with  death, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  these  offences  would  be  shunned 
with  the  greatest  carefulness,  and  that  too  bv  the  very  men 
whom  no  exhortations,  and  no  warnings,  can  now  deter 
from  their  commission.  Yet  it  is  not  that  punishment  is  one 
jot  less  certain  now  than  it  would  be  on  the  supposed  change 
of  arrangement.  The  only  difference  is,  that,  in  one  case, 
God  displays  long-suffering,  and  that  in  the  other  he  would 
not  display  long-suffering — the  certainty  that  punishment 
will  follow  crime  is  quite  the  same  in  both.  And  thus,  un- 
happily, sin  is  less  avoided  than  it  would  be  if  we  lived 
under  an  economy  of  immediate  retribution  ;  and  "  because 
sentence  against  an  evil  work  is  not  executed  speedily, 
therefore  the  heart  of  the  sons  of  men  is  fully  set  in  them  to 
do  evil."  In  place  of  being  softened  by  the  patience  of  which 
we  have  so  long  been  the  objects,  we  are  apt  to  be  encou- 
raged by  it  to  further  resistance  ;  calculating  that  he  who  has 
so  often  forborne  to  strike,  will  spare  a  little  longer,'  and  that 
we  may  with  safety  yet  defer  to  repent. 

It  is,  therefore,  of  great  importance  that  men  be  taught 
that  there  are  limits  even  to  the  forbearance  of  God,  and 
that  it  is  possible  so  to  presume  on  it  as  to  exhaust.  And 
this  is  evidently  what  the  Psalmist  inculcates  in  the  first  of 
those  verses  on  which  we  would  discourse.  He  seems  to 
mark  the  times  in  which  he  lived  as  times  of  extraordinary 
depravity,  when  men  had  thrown  off  the  restraints  of  reli- 
gion." (:  They  have  made  void  thy  law."  They  have  reduc- 
ed the  divine  precepts  to  a  dead  letter,  and  refuse  to  receive 
them  as  a  rule  of  life.  The  expression  manifestly  denotes 
that  a  more  than  common  contempt  was  put  on  the  com- 


THROUGH    THE    MAKING    VOID    THE    LAW.  445 

mandments  of  God,  and  thatjxjen  had  reached  a  rare  poiut 
of  insolence  and  disobedience.  And  it  is  further  manifest, 
that,  when  wickedness  was  thus  at  its  height,  David  expect- 
ed that  there  would  be  an  end  of  the  forbearance  of  God, 
and  that  lie  would  at  length  give  scope  to  his  righteous  in- 
dignation." "  It  is  time  for  thee,  Lord,  to  work  :  for  they  have 
made  void  thy  law."  As  much  as  to  say,  men  have  now 
exceeded  the  bounds  prescribed  to  long-suffering  ;  they  have 
outrun  the  limits  of  grace ;  and  now,  therefore,  God  must 
interfere,  vindicate  his  own  honor,  and  repress  the  swellings 
of  unrighteousness. 

This  then,  is  the  first  truth  presented  by  our  text, — that  it 
is  possible  to  go  so  far  in  disobedience  that  it  will  be  neces- 
sary for  God  to  interpose  in  vengeance,  and  visibly  with- 
stand men's  impiety.  But  what  effect  will  be  produced  on  a 
truly  righteous  man  by  this  extraordinary  prevalence  of  ini- 
quity ?  Will  he  be  carried  away  by  the  current  of  evil  ? 
Will  he  be  tempted,  by  the  universal  scorn  which  he  sees 
thrown  on  God's  law,  to  think  slightingly  of  it  himself,  and 
give  it  less  of  his  reverence  and  attachment?  On  the  con- 
trary, this  law  becomes  more  precious  in  David's  sight,  in 
proportion  as  he  felt  that  it  was  so  despised  and  set  aside, 
that  the  time  for  God  to  work  had  arrived.  You  observe 
that  the  verses  are  connected  by  the  word  "therefore." 
"  They  have  made  void  thy  law."  What  then  ?  is  that  law 
less  esteemed  and  less  prized  by  myself?  Quite  the  reverse  ; 
"  they  have  made  void  thy  law  ;  therefore  I  love  thy  com- 
mandments above  gold,  yea  above  fine  gold."  There  is  much 
that  deserves  our  closest  attention  in  this  connection  between 
the  verses.  It  is  a  high  point  of  holiness  which  that  man 
has  reached,  whose  love  of  God's  commandments  grows 
with  the  contempt  which  all  around  him  put  on  these  com- 
mandments. This,  then,  is  the  second  truth  presented  by 
our  text, — that  there  is  greater  reason  than  ever  for  our 
prizing  God's  law,  if  the  times  should  be  those  in  which 
that  law  is  made  void.  So  that  there  are  two  great  princi- 
ples which  must  successively  engage  our  attention  in  medi- 
tating on  the  words  which  form  our  subject  of  address.    The 


44G  THE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED 

first  is,  that  there  is  a  point  in  human  iniquity  at  which  it  is 
necessary  that  God  should  interfere  ;  the  second,  that,  when 
this  point  is  reached,  the  righteous  are  more  than  ever  bound 
to  prize  and  love  the  law  of  the  Lord.  It  will  be  our  en- 
deavor to  set  these  principles  clearly  before  you,  and  to 
examine  them  in  their  several  bearings  and  results. 

Now,  in  one  of  those  visions  which  God  vouchsafed  to 
the  patriarch  Abraham,  the  land  of  Canaan  was  promised 
to  his  posterity,  but  a  distant  time  fixed  for  their  taking  pos- 
session. The  reason  given  why  centuries  must  elapse  ere 
they  could  enter  on  the  inheritance,  is  every  way  remarka- 
ble. "  In  the  fourth  generation  they  shall  come  hither 
again  ;  for  the  iniquity  of  the  Amorites  is  not  yet  full."  We 
may  understand  the  Amorites  to  be  put  here  generally  for 
the  inhabitants  of  Canaan,  whose  iniquities  were  gradually 
bringing  on  their  expulsion  and  extermination.  And  though 
even  these  inhabitants  might  have  been  conspicuous  in 
idolatry  and  impiety,  they  had  not,  it  appears,  yet  reached 
that  measure  of  guiltiness  which  was  to  mark  them  out  for 
vengeance.  "  The  iniquity  of  the  Amorites,"  saith  God,  "  is 
not  yet  full ;  and,  therefore,  I  cannot  yet  give  command  for 
their  destruction, — nay,  it  will  not  be  until  the  fourth  gene- 
ration that  I  can  dispossess  them  to  make  room  for  my  peo- 
ple." It  is  evident,  from  this  instance,  that  in  the  exercise 
of  his  long-suffering,  God  allows  nations  a  certain  period 
of  probation,  but  that  there  is  a  point  up  to  which,  if  they 
accumulate  iniquity,  they  can  expect  nothing  but  an  out- 
break of  indignation  and  punishment.  It  was  not  yet  time 
for  God  to  work,  inasmuch  as  the  Amorites,  though  disobe- 
dient to  his  law,  had  not  yet  gone  the  length  of  making  it 
void.  But  that  time  would  arrive.  The  Amorites  would 
advance  from  one  degree  of  sinfulness  to  another,  and  the 
children  would  but  add  to  the  burden  of  misdoing  entailed 
on  them  by  profligate  fathers.  Then  would  be  the  time  for 
God  to  work  ;  and  then  would  the  Almighty  arise  in  his 
fury,  and  prove,  by  the  vehemence  of  his  dealings,  that 
though  slow  to  anger,  he  will  not  finally  acquit  the  wicked. 
We  need  not  remind  you  how  fearfully  this  truth  was  ex- 


THROUGH    THE    MAKING     VOID    THE    LAW. 


447 


einplitied  in  the  instance  of  the  Amorites.  The  terrible  judg- 
ments at  length  inflicted  through  the  instrumentality  of  the 
Israelites  are  known  to  all,  and  show  clearly  that  punish- 
ment is  not  the  less  sure  because  long  delayed. 

You  have  the  same  truth  depicted  in  the  case  of  the  Jews. 
You  find  Christ,  in  one  of  these  tremendous  denunciations, 
which  are  the  more  awful,  because  found  on  the  lips  of  him, 
who,  "  when  he  was  reviled,  reviled  not  again,"  declaring 
that  the  blood  of  all  the  prophets  which  had  been  shed  from 
the  foundation  of  the  world,  should  be  required  of  the  nation 
he  addressed.  The  representation  is  here  the  same  as  in  the 
instance  of  the  Amorites.  The  Jews  had  been  long  borne 
with  ;  and  God,  though  often  provoked  by  their  impieties  to 
inflict  lesser  punishments,  had  not  yet  gone  the  length  of  cast- 
ing them  off  as  a  nation.  But  their  wickedness  was  not  forgot- 
ten nor  overlooked,  because  yet  unvisited  with  the  extreme  of 
indignation.  Each  century  of  profligacy  had  only  treasured 
up  wrath ;  and  Christ  bids  the  abandoned  of  his  own  day 
fill  up  the  measure  of  their  fathers,  that  it  might  at  last  be 
time  for  God  to  work.  And  when  the  time  came,  and  the 
iniquity  was  full,  then  it  appeared  that  it  is  a  tremendous 
thing  to  have  worn  out  divine  patience ;  for  wrath  fell  so 
signally  and  so  fiercely  on  the  Jews,  that  their  miseries 
exceeded  those  which  their  ancestors  had  dealt  to  the 
Amorites. 

These  instances — and  it  were  easy  to  adduce  more — suffi- 
ciently prove  that  God  keeps  what  we  may  call  a  reckoning 
with  nations,  and  that  there  is  a  sum  total  of  guilt — though 
it  be  out  of  our  power  to  define  the  amount — which  he  al- 
lows not  to  be  passed ;  but  which,  when  reached,  draws 
down  upon  the  land  the  long-deferred  vengeance.  We  say 
that  it  is  out  of  our  power  to  define  the  amount,  for  we 
know  not  precisely  that  point  in  iniquity  at  which  it  may 
be  said  that  God's  law  is  made  void.  But  it  is  comparatively 
unimportant  that  we  ascertain  the  exact  amount  of  guilt 
which  becomes  such  a  mill-stone  round  the  neck  of  a  people, 
that  they  are  dragged  into  the  depths  of  disaster  and  wretch- 
edness.   It  is  sufficient  to  know  that  God  takes  account  of 


448  THE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED 

what  is  clone  on  the  earth,  and  that  he  charges  on  one  gene- 
ration the  crimes  of  a  preceding.  It  is  enough  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes,  that  we  can  prove  there  are  limits  to  the  for- 
bearance of  the  Almighty  ;  and  that  consequently  it  is  either 
ignorance  or  insanity  which  would  count  on  impunity,  be- 
cause there  is  delay.  We  say  that  this  is  enough  ;  for  this 
should  make  every  true  lover  of  his  country  eager  to  diminish 
the  sum-total  of  national  guiltiness.  It  matters  nothing  whether 
we  can  tell,  in  any  given  instance,  by  how  many  fractions 
the  sum  is  yet  below  that  amount  at  which  it  must  be  met 
by  commensurate  vengeance.  The  grand  thing  is,  that  we 
ascertain  a  principle  in  the  Divine  dealings,  the  principle 
that  there  is  a  register  kept  of  the  impieties  of  a  land,  and 
that,  too,  with  the  unerring  accuracy  of  the  Omniscient ;  and 
that  though,  as  the  figures  go  on  rapidly  accumulating,  God 
may  bear  with  the  land,  and  ply  it  with  calls  to  repentance 
and  overtures  of  forgiveness,  yet  when  those  figures  pre- 
sent a  certain  array,  they  serve  as  a  signal  to  the  ministry 
of  wrath,  and  mark  that  there  are  no  sands  left  in  the  glass 
of  Divine  patience.  And  when  we  have  determined  this 
principle,  how  clear,  how  imperative,  the  duty  of  laboring 
to  strike  off  some  figures,  and  thus  to  gain  further  respite 
for  a  country  whose  register  may  be  fast  approaching  the 
fatal  amount.  We  know  of  a  land  for  which  God  hath  done 
more  than  for  any  other  on  which  the  sun  shines,  as  he 
makes  the  circuit  of  the  globe.  It  is  a  land  which  hath  been 
marvellously  preserved  from  the  incursions  of  enemies;  and 
whose  vallies,  whilst  the  rest  of  the  earth  was  turned  into 
one  vast  battle-plain,  never  echoed  with  the  tocsin  of  war. 
It  is  a  land  which,  though  inconsiderable  in  itself,  has  been 
raised  to  a  greatness  unequalled  amongst  nations,  whose 
fame  is  on  every  shore,  whose  fleets  on  every  sea,  and  whose 
resources  have  seemed  so  to  grow  with  the  demand,  that 
every  trial  has  but  developed  the  unsuspected  strength.  And 
it  is  little  that  this  land,  by  prowess  in  arms,  and  wisdom  in 
debate,  has  won  itself  a  name  of  the  mightiest  renown,  sub- 
dued kingdoms,  planted  colonies,  and  gathered  into  its  har- 
bors the  commerce  of  the  world.    We  know  yet  greater 


THROUGH    THE    MAKING    VOID    THE    LAW.  449 

tilings  of  this  land.  We  know  that  Christianity,  in  all  its 
purity,  is  publicly  taught  as  the  religion  of  the  land;  that  in 
its  churches  is  proclaimed  the  life-giving  doctrine  of  the 
"  one  Mediator  between  God  and  man ;"  and  that  its  civil 
institutions  have  all  that  beauty,  and  all  that  expansive- 
ness,  which  nothing  but  the  Gospel  of  Christ  was  ever  yet 
able  to  produce  or  preserve.  But  we  have  our  fears — oh, 
more  than  our  fears, — regard  of  this  land,  that,  whilst  it  has 
thus  been  the  recipient  of  unrivalled  mercies,  whilst  Provi- 
dence has  watched  over  it,  and  shielded  it,  and  poured  upon 
it  all  that  was  choicest  in  the  treasure-house  of  heaven, 
there  have  been  an  ingratitude,  and  a  contempt  of  the  Be- 
nefactor, and  a  growing  distaste  for  religion,  and  a  pride, 
and  a  covetousness,  and  a  luxury,  which  have  written  many 
find  large  figures  in  the  register  which  God  keeps  of  na- 
tions ;  so  that,  though  the  land  is  still  borne  with,  yea,  still 
abundantly  blessed,  it  has  made  vast  approaches  towards 
that  fullness  of  iniquity  which  the  Amorite  reached,  and 
which  the  Israelites  reached,  but  reached  only  to  perish. 
God  forbid  that  we  should  say  of  the  land  to  which  we 
have  referred,  whatever  its  sins,  that  as  yet  it  hath  made 
void  the  law  of  its  Maker.  We  hope  better  things  of  that 
land.  We  hope  that  there  is  yet  such  vigor  in  its  piety  as 
will  give  fixedness  to  what  is  venerable  and  precious  in  its 
institutions.  But  we  are  sure  that  with  the  purity  of  its 
Christianity  must  stand  or  fall  the  majesty  of  its  empire. 
We  are  sure  that  it  is,  as  the  home  of  protestantism,  the 
centre  of  truth  ;  that  God  hath  honored  and  upheld  the  land 
of  which  we  speak ;  and  that  the  rapid  way  of  multiplying 
the  figures,  which  may  already  be  portentous  in  its  ac- 
count, would  be  the  surrendering  its  protestantism,  and  the 
giving,  in  any  way,  countenance  to  popery.  Oh,  if  it  could 
ever  come  to  pass,  that,  acting  on  the  principle  of  a  short- 
sighted policy,  the  rulers  of  the  land  in  question  should  re- 
store his  lost  ascendancy  to  the  man  of  sin,  and  take  under 
the  patronage  and  protection  of  the  state  that  religion  which 
prophecy  has  unequivocally  denounced,  and  in  writing 
against  which  a  pious  ancestry  met  death  in  its  most  terrible 
57 


450  THE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED 

shapes ;  then,  indeed,  may  we  think,  the  measure  of  the 
guilt  would  be  full  ;  then,  in  the  national  apostasy  might  be 
read  the  advance  of  national  ruin — yea  then,  we  believe — 
the  protest  of  a  witness  for  truth  being  no  longer  given — 
there  would  be  heard  a  voice,  issuing  from  the  graves  of 
martyrs  and  confessors  with  which  the  land  is  covered,  and 
from  the  souls  which  St.  John  saw  beneath  the  altar  when 
the  fifth  seal  was  opened,  "  that  were  slain  for  the  word  of 
God,  and  for  the  testimony  which  they  held  ;"  and  these 
would  be  the  words  which  the  voice  would  utter :  "  It  is 
time  for  thee,  Lord,  to  work  ;  for  they  have  made  void  thy 
law." 

But  we  do  not  suppose  that  these  words  should  be  inter- 
preted with  reference  only  to  that  point  in  national  guilt  at 
which  God  is  moved  to  interfere  in  vengeance.  Vengeance 
is  one  way  in  which  God  works  ;  but  it  is  a  way  of  which 
we  may  declare,  that  it  is  forced  upon  God,  and  not  resorted 
to  without  the  greatest  reluctance.  We  find  these  expres- 
sions in  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah  :  "  The  Lord  shall  rise  up 
as  in  Mount  Perazim,  he  shall  be  wroth  as  in  the  valley  of 
Gibeon,  that  he  may  do  his  work,  his  strange  work,  and 
bring  to  pass  his  act,  his  strange  act."  You  observe,  the 
work  of  wrath  is  a  strange  work,  and  the  act  of  punishment 
is  a  strange  act.  God  strikes,  but  the  striking  might  almost 
be  declared  foreign  to  his  nature  ;  it  is  necessary  for  the  vin- 
dication of  his  attributes,  but  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  con- 
genial with  them.  There  is  much  in  this  to  encourage  the 
penitent,  but  not  the  presumptuous.  God  may  be  loth  to 
punish,  but  nevertheless  he  will  punish  :  and  I  am  only  im- 
pressed with  a  greater  sense  of  the  tremendousness  of  divine 
wrath,  when  I  find  that  the  bringing  it  into  act  is  an  effort 
even  to  the  Omnipotent.  How  weighty  must  that  be  which 
God  himself  has  difficulty  in  raising  ! 

There  are,  however,  other  ways  in  which  God  works, 
when  moved  by  the  making  void  of  his  law.  It  is  curious 
and  interesting  to  observe  how  God,  from  the  first,  has  been 
mindful  of  what  passes  on  the  earth,  and  how  he  has  inter- 
posed just  when  a  crisis  has  demanded  the  interposition. 


THROUGH    THE    MAKING    VOID    THE    LAM'. 


451 


When  our  first  parents  fell,  his  law  was  emphatically  made 
void  ;  and  then  there  appearing  no  alternative  to  the  de- 
struction of  our  race,  it  was  time  for  God  to  work  ;  the  exi- 
gence could  be  met  by  nothing  but  a  divine  interference, 
and  God  graciously  worked  as  a  deliverer.  And 'afterwards 
the  notices  of  traditional  religion  were  soon  so  obscured  and 
weakened,  that  there  was  danger  of  all  remembrance  of  its 
Maker  perishing  from  the  globe.  The  law  was  so  made 
void,  and  wickedness  had  reached  such  a  height,  that  it  was 
time  for  God  to  work  in  vengeance  ;  and  accordingly  he 
brought  a  flood  upon  the  earth,  and  swept  away  thousands 
of  the  ungodly.  But  whilst  working  in  vengeance,  he  work- 
ed also  in  mercy,  and,  living  Noah  and  his  family,  provided 
that  the  world  should  be  re-peopled,  and  that  there  should 
be  myriads  for  his  Son  to  redeem.  And  then,  if  he  had  left 
the  earth  to  itself,  it  would  have  been  quickly  overspread 
with  idolatry,  and  all  flesh  have  become  corrupt  as  it  was 
before  the  flood.  But  here  again  it  was  time  for  God  to 
work,  and  he  set  apart  one  family  for  himself,  and  through 
its  instrumentality  preserved  mankind  from  total  degeneracy, 
until  the  period  of  the  incarnation  arrived.  It  may  be  af- 
firmed also,  that  this  period  was  one  at  which  the  necessity 
for  divine  interference  had  become  strongly  marked.  We 
learn  from  St.  Paul,  that,  "  after  that,  in  the  wisdom  of  God, 
the  world  by  wisdom  knew  not  God,  it  pleased  God,  by  the 
foolishness  of  preaching,  to  save  them  that  believe."  So 
that  it  appears  that,  through  successive  centuries  of  heathen- 
ism, there  had  been  carried  on  an  experiment,  not  for  the 
satisfaction  of  God,  who  knows  the  end  from  the  beginning, 
but  for  the  conviction  of  men  who  are  prone  to  magnify 
their  powers  ;  and  that  the  object  of  this  experiment  had 
been  the  ascertaining  whether,  by  its  own  wisdom,  the 
world  could  acquire  a  sound  knowledge  of  its  Maker.  And 
the  apostle  declares  that,  when  Christ  came,  the  experiment 
had  been  fully  made,  and  that  its  result  Avas  completely 
against  the  boasted  strength  of  reason.  So  that  here  again 
it  was  time  for  God  to  work.  Reason  had  proved  itself  quite 
incompetent  to  the  producing  right  notions  of  God,  and  there- 


452  THE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED 

fore  a  just  estimate  of  his  law  ;  and  now,  then,  the  law  being 
altogether  made  void,  it  was  time  for  God  to  work  through 
a  new  revelation  of  himself.  And  certainly  you  can  have 
little  difficulty  in  determining  for  yourselves,  that,  in  regard 
of  the  christian  church,  God  has  acted  on  the  principle  laid 
down  in  our  text.  How  often  has  he  allowed  matters  to 
come,  as  it  were,  to  an  extremity,  in  order  that  there  might 
be  a  clear  need  of  his  interference,  and  then  has  he  arisen 
mightily  to  the  succor  of  the  perishing.  In  earlier  days  he 
permitted  persecution  to  make  great  havoc  with  the  church, 
so  that  Satan  seemed  often  on  the  point  of  effecting  the  ex- 
tirpation of  Christianity.  But  it  was  soon  found  that  a  sea- 
son of  depression  ushered  in  one  of  triumph,  and  that  the 
church  was  brought  low,  that  she  might  be  more  signally 
exalted.  And  when  we  survey  Christianity,  in  its  first 
struggles  with  heathenism,  reduced  often  to  so  languid  a 
condition  that  there  seemed  nothing  to  be  looked  for  but  its 
total  extinction,  and  then  suddenly  rising  in  greater  bril- 
liancy and  purity,  we  can  only  say  that  God  thereby  proved 
that  he  reserves  his  gracious  interpositions  for  exigencies 
when  their  necessity  cannot  be  denied,  and  that  he  acts  on 
the  principle,  that,  when  men  make  void  his  law,  then  it  is 
time  for  him  to  work. 

Neither  is  there  any  cause  for  surprise  that  such  should 
be  a  principle  in  the  divine  dispensations.  You  must  own 
that  when,  on  all  human  calculations,  the  case  is  desperate, 
the  interference  of  God  will  be  more  distinctly  recognized, 
and  the  likelihood  is  less  of  his  being  robbed  of  the  honor 
due  unto  his  name.  Hence  it  might  be  expected  that  God 
would  choose  those  times  for  interposition  at  which  it  was 
most  evident  that  no  power  but  a  divine  could  suffice,  in 
order  to  counteract  that  proneness,  of  which  the  best  must 
be  conscious,  to  ascribe  to  second  causes  what  should  be  re- 
ferred only  to  the  first.  "We  may  add  to  this,  that,  in  the 
hour  of  the  church's  depression  and  danger,  there  will  be 
more  fervent  prayer  on  her  behalf  from  the  yet  faithful  rem- 
nant ;  and  we  know  that  God  delights  to  answer  the  earnest 
supplications  of  his  people.   And  it  is  under  this  point  of 


THROUGH    THE    MAKING    VOID    THE    LAW.  453 

view  that  our  text  should  encourage  us,  as  much  as  it  alarms 
others.  We  have  shown  you  that  there  is  an  amount  of 
guiltiness,  defined  by  the  making  void  of  God's  law,  which 
provokes  the  Almighty  to  come  forth  as  an  avenger.  But  we 
now  show  you  that  it  is  not  only  as  an  avenger,  but  equally 
as  a  protector,  that  God  appears  in  days  when  his  law  is 
made  void  upon  earth.  These  are  days  when  the  righteous 
will  be  stirred  by  the  aboundings  of  iniquity  to  greater  dili- 
gence in  prayer ;  and  God  has  promised  that  he  will  "  avenge 
his  own  elect  which  cry  day  and  night  unto  him,  though  he 
bear  long  with  them."  You  see,  then,  what  your  duty  is,  if 
your  lot  be  cast  in  times  when  there  seems  danger  that  truth 
will  be  overborne  by  falsehood.  Our  text  instructs  you  as 
to  the  form  into  which  to  shape  your  petitions.  We  have 
spoken  already  of  a  land  over  which,  as  the  depository  of  the 
pure  religion  of  Christ,  has  been  spread  for  long  years  the 
shield  of  divine  favor.  We  have  spoken  of  the  desperate 
jeopardy  in  which  that  land  would  be  placed,  if  its  legisla- 
ture should  so  abjure  the  principles  of  protestantism  as  to 
give  countenance  and  support  to  the  Roman  apostasy.  It 
would  be  time  for  God  to  work  in  indignation  and  vengeance, 
if  a  people,  whom  he  hath  marvellously  delivered  from  the 
bondage  of  popery,  and  whom  he  strengthened  to  throw  off 
a  yoke  which  had  kept  down  their  immortality,  should  £ive 
vigor,  by  any  national  act,  to  the  corrupt  faith  of  Rome,  and 
thus  reanimate  the  tyranny  which  waits  but  a  touch,  and  it 
will  start  again  into  despotism.  But  we  know  what  would 
be  the  business  of  all  the  righteous  in  that  land,  if  they  saw 
signs  of  the  approach  of  such  peril.  We  know  that  it  would 
not  become  them  to  sit  in  calm  expectation  of  the  ruin,  com- 
forting themselves  with  the  belief  that  God  would  shelter  his 
own  people  in  the  day  of  indignation.  It  would  be  their 
business  to  recall  the  memory  of  former  deliverances,  and  to 
bear  in  mind  how  God  has  always  chosen  extremities  when 
there  seemed  least  hope  that  ruin  would  be  averted,  for  the 
manifestations  of  his  care  over  his  church.  It  would  be  their 
business  to  remember,  and  to  act  on  the  remembrance,  that 
the  time  for  God,  in  every  sense,  to  work,  is  the  time  at  which 


4  54  THE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED. 

men  are  making  void  his  law.  And  we  have  a  confidence 
in  "  the  effectual  fervent  prayer  of  a  righteous  man,"  which 
forbids  our  despairing  of  any  land,  within  whose  confines 
are  yet  found  the  believing  and  prayerful.  If  the  presence 
of  ten  righteous  would  have  turned  away  the  fire  and  brim- 
stone from  the  guilty  cities  of  the  plain,  we  shall  not  reckon 
the  doom  of  any  country  sealed,  so  long  as  we  know  that  it 
is  not  destitute  of  the  leaven  of  godliness,  but  that  there  are 
among  its  inhabitants  who  view,  in  a  season  of  danger,  a 
season  when  they  may  go,  with  special  confidence,  to  the 
mercy-seat,  and  plead,  "  It  is  time  for  thee,  Lord,  to  work." 
The  hearts  of  statesmen  are  in  the  hands  of  God,  and  the 
passions  of  tbe  turbulent  and  disaffected  are  under  his  go- 
vernance, and  the  designs  of  the  enemies  of  his  church  are 
all  subject  to  his  over-ruling  providence  ;  and  prayer  moves 
the  arm  which  marsh  alls  stars,  and  calms  the  great  deep, 
and  directs  the  motions  of  disordered  wills.  Why,  then, 
should  we  despair  for  a  land,  unless  assured  that  patriotism 
has  become  dissociated  from  righteousness,  and  that  they, 
whose  privilege  it  is  to  have  access  to  the  Father  through 
the  Mediator,  Christ,  and  to  whom  the  promise  has  been 
made  by  the  Savior,  "  Whatsoever  ye  shall  ask  the  Father 
in  my  name,  he  will  give  it  you,"  have  so  far  turned  traitors 
as  to  remember  not  their  country  in  their  petitions?  If,  in- 
deed, in  the  land  of  which  we  have  spoken,  a  protestant 
government  were  so  to  sacrifice  every  principle  which  enters 
into  its  constitution,  as  to  make  provision  for  the  propagation 
of  papal  falsehood  and  delusion,  we-  might  justly  fear  that 
the  time  for  intercession  had  passed,  and  that  God  must 
hearken  to  the  voice  pealing  forth  from  the  sepulchres  of 
martyred  thousands,  and  from  the  souls  beneath  the  altar, 
telling  him  the  time  was  come  for  him  to  work  as  an 
avenger.  But  so  long,  at  least,  as  the  land  held  fast  its  pro- 
testantism, and  there  was  only  the  threatening  of  its  being 
surrendered,  we  should  feel  that  a  vast  responsibility  was 
laid  upon  the  men  of  prayer,  and  upon  the  women  of  prayer, 
throughout  that  land.  Aye,  and  we  should  hope  that  the 
days  of  its  happiness  and  its  greatness  were  not  numbered. 


THROUGH    THE    MAKING    VOID    THE    LAW.  455 

and  that  measures,  fraught  with  its  desolation,  because  in- 
volving the  compromise  of  its  Christianity,  would  never  be 
permitted  to  be  enacted  and  enforced,  if  we  knew  that  these 
men  and  these  women  were  urgent  in  the  business  of  supplica- 
tion, and  that  from  beneath  every  roof  which  gave  shelter  to 
God-fearing  individuals,  in  the  city,  in  the  village,  on  the 
mountain,  in  the  valley,  was  issuing  the  cry,  "  It  is  time  for 
thee,  Lord,  to  work  as  a  Protector,  for  they  are  making  void 
thy  law.;' 

Now  we  are  so  pressed  by  the  remainder  of  our  great  sub- 
ject of  discourse,  that  we  are  compelled  to  pass  by  much  on 
which  we  wished  to  enlarge.  It  is  evident  that  the  portion 
oi  our  text,  on  which  we  have  hitherto  spoken,  admits  of  an 
individual,  as  well  as  a  national,  application.  We  might 
speak  to  you  of  limits  to  the  divine  forbearance,  when  any 
one  amongst  ourselves  is  regarded  as  the  object  of  its  exer- 
cise ;  and  show  you,  consequently,  the  madness  of  our  pre- 
suming on  long-suffering,  as  though  it  could  not  be  exhaust- 
ed. We  might  enlarge  also  on  the  personal  encouragement 
which  the  text  gives  to  those  who  put  trust  in  God  ;  inas- 
much as  we  perceive  that  the  being  brought  into  circum- 
stances of  unusual  danger  and  distress,  in  place  of  causing 
despondency,  should  give  occasion  for  greater  hope,  the 
hour  of  special  tribulation  being  ordinarily  chosen  by  God 
as  the  hour  of  his  choicest  manifestations. 

We  must,  however,  refer  these  considerations  to  your  pri- 
vate meditations,  though  it  will  be  evident  to  those  who 
trace  carefully  the  connection  of  the  several  parts  of  our  dis- 
course, that  they  enter,  in  a  degree,  into  what  has  yet  to  be 
advanced. 

The  second  great  truth  presented  by  our  text,  and  which 
we  have  now  to  examine,  is  that,  when  the  point  in  iniquity 
is  reached  at  which  God's  interference  becomes  necessary, 
the  righteous  are  more  than  ever  bound  to  prize  and  love 
the  law  of  the  Lord.  We  derive  this  truth,  as  we  have  be- 
fore said,  from  the  connection  between  the  verses.  When 
David  has  declared  that  it  is  time  for  God  to  work,  since  his 
law  was  made  void,  he  adds,  "  Therefore  I  love  thy  com- 


456  l'HE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED 

mandments  above  gold,  yea,  above  fine  gold," — clearly  hn- 
plying,  that  the  contempt  put  on  God's  law  was  an  additional 
motive  to  his  giving  that  law  his  esteem  and  affection.  And 
it  is  of  great  importance  we  determine  on  what  principles 
David  proceeded  in  making  this  decision,  or  what  reasons 
were  on  his  side  when  he  valued  the  commandments,  be- 
cause made  void  by  others.  It  cannot  be  denied,  as  we  have 
already  intimated,  that  it  is  a  high  point  in  holiness  which 
the  Psalmist  is  hereby  proved  to  have  reached.  We  must 
own,  in  respect  of  ourselves,  that  we  find  it  hard  to  confess 
Christ,  and  declare  ourselves  his  followers,  in  the  face  of  a 
vehement  and  growing  opposition. 

In  sketching  the  characteristics  and  occurrences  which 
should  mark  the  approach  of  the  second  advent,  the  Savior 
uttered  this  prediction,  "  And  because  iniquity  shall  abound, 
the  love  of  many  shall  wax  cold."  He  knew  what  a  para- 
lyzing and  deadening  influence  would  be  exerted  over  piety 
by  multiplied  wickedness,  and  how  sickly  and  dwarfish,  for 
the  most  part,  would  Christianity  become,  when  the  soil  and 
the  atmosphere  were  saturated  with  unrighteousness.  And 
the  event  has  but  too  faithfully  borne  out  the  prediction.  It 
is  at  all  times  difficult  to  hold  fast  the  christian  profession. 
But  the  difficulty  is  a  hundred-fold  augmented,  when  it  must 
be  held  fast  with  few  or  none  to  keep  us  in  countenance, 
and  when  to  dare  to  be  religious  is  to  dare  the  opposition  of 
a  neighborhood.  And  it  is  but  too  possible  that  much  of  the 
Christianity  which  passes  muster  in  our  own  day.  and  wins 
itself  a  reputation  for  soundness  and  staunchness,  is  indebted 
for  its  very  existence  to  the  absence  of  persecution  ;  and  that, 
if  there  came  days  in  which  God's  law  was  made  void,  and 
the  church  was  sifted  by  fiery  trial,  a  great  proportion  of 
what  appears  genuine  and  stedfast  would  prove  its  hollow- 
ness  by  defection,  in  place  of  being  strengthened  and  con- 
firmed by  opposition. 

But  however  this  be,  we  may  declare  of  the  truly  reli- 
gious, that  they  have  increased  cause  for  prizing  and  ad- 
hering to  God's  law,  if  the  days  in  which  they  live  be  days 
in  which  iniquity  is  more  than  ordinarily  prevalent.  It  is  too 


THROUGH    THE    MAKING    VOID    THE    LAW.  457 

obvious,  in  the  first  place,  to  be  overlooked,  that,  in  days 
such  as  these,  there  is  the  very  finest  opportunity  of  giving 
honor  to  God.  To  love  his  commandments  above  gold, 
whilst  others  count  them  but  dross,  is  to  display  a  noble 
zeal  for  his  glory,  and  to  appear  as  the  champions  of  his 
cause,  when  that  cause  is  on  the  point  of  being  universally 
deserted.  The  promise  moreover  runs,  "  Them  that  honor 
me,  I  will  honor;"  and  the  season,  therefore,  in  which  the 
greatest  honor  may  be  given  to  God,  is  that  also  in  which 
the  most  of  future  glory  may  be  secured  by  the  righteous. 
What  then,  the  Psalmist  seems  to  ask — would  you  have  me 
less  fervent  in  attachment  to  God's  law,  because  the  making 
void  of  that  law  has  rendered  it  a  time  for  God  to  work  ? 
What,  shall  I  choose  that  moment  for  turning  traitor  when 
God  will  be  most  glorified,  and  myself  most  advantaged,  by 
loyalty?  What,  relax  in  devotedness,  just  when,  by  main- 
taining my  allegiance,  I  may  bear  the  noblest  testimony,  and 
gain  the  highest  recompense  ?  Oh,  where  the  heart  has  been 
given  to  God,  and  fixed  on  the  glories  of  heaven,  there 
should  be  a  feeling  that  days,  in  which  religion  is  most  de- 
cried and  derided,  are  days  in  which  zeal  should  be  warm- 
est, and  profession  most  unflinching.  To  adhere  boldly  to 
the  cause  of  righteousness,  when  almost  solitary  in  adhe- 
rence, is  to  fight  the  battle  when  champions  are  most  needed, 
and  when  therefore  victory  will  be  most  triumphant.  Let 
then,  saith  the  Psalmist,  the  times  be  times  of  universal  de- 
fection from  godliness — I  will  gather  warmth  from  the  cold- 
ness of  others,  courage  from  their  cowardice,  loyalty  from 
their  treason.  Indeed,  as  I  gaze  on  what  is  passing  around 
me,  I  cannot  but  observe  that  thy  law,  O  God,  is  made  void, 
and  that  it  is  therefore  time  for  thee  to  work.  But  I  am  not 
on  this  account  shaken  in  attachment  to  thy  service.  On 
the  contrary,  thy  law  seems  to  me  more  precious  than  ever, 
for  in  now  keeping  thy  commandments  I  can  give  thee 
greater  glory,  and  find  greater  reward.  What  then  ?  it  may 
be  that  they  have  made  void  thy  law  ;  but  from  my  heart  I 
can  say,  "  Therefore,  on  that  very  account,  I  love  thy  com- 
mandments above  gold,  yea,  above  fine  gold." 
58 


458  THE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED 

It  may  be  said,  however,  that  though  we  thus  give  a  rea- 
son why  David  should  have  been  more  earnest  in  holding 
fast  his  profession,  we  scarcely  touch  the  point  why  the 
commandments  themselves  should  have  been  more  precious 
in  his  sight.  But  it  is  not  difficult  to  explain  the  connection 
between  the  verses,  even  if  it  be  simply  the  love  of  God's 
law  which  we  suppose  increased  by  the  prevalence  of  im- 
piety. We  know,  beyond  all  peradventure,  that  the  only  re- 
medy for  the  multiplied  disorders  of  this  creation  is  to  be 
found  in  conformity  to  the  revealed  will  of  God.  We  are 
sure,  whatever  schemes  may  be  devised  for  the  amelioration 
of  human  condition,  that  the  happiness  of  a  people  is  closely 
bound  up  with  its  righteousness,  and  that  the  greater  the 
departure  from  God  the  greater  the  misery  introduced  into 
its  families.  It  is  no  unwarranted  assertion,  but  one  which 
will  stand  every  test  to  which  it  can  fairly  be  brought,  that 
the  decline  of  a  nation's  prosperity  keeps  pace  with  the  de- 
cline of  its  piety,  and  that  in  banishing  true  religion  you 
banish  the  chief  elements  of  its  greatness  and  security. 

And  what  is  the  condition  of  a  land,  when  its  inhabitants 
have  literally  made  void  God's  law  ?  The  experiment  was 
tried  in  the  heart  of  civilized  Europe  ;  and  we  all  know 
what  fearful  scenes  were  enacted  on  the  stage  of  revo- 
lutionized France,  when  atheism  was  the  only  creed  which 
the  nation  would  profess.  We  have  no  instance  in  history 
of  a  people  throwing  equal  scorn  on  their  Creator,  and  nei- 
ther have  we  any  of  a  people  being  plunged  in  equal  depths 
of  misery.  There  was  then  given  a  demonstration,  never  to 
be  forgotten,  that  to  throw  off  the  restraints  of  religion  is  to 
proclaim  the  carnival  of  anarchy  and  bloodshed  ;  and  that 
the  getting  quit  of  the  fear  of  God  is  the  surest  mode  of  un- 
dermining government,  invading  the  rights  of  property,  and 
turning  a  civilized  people  into  a  horde  of  barbarians  and 
assassins.  But  if  such  be  the  consequences  of  making  void 
God's  law,  what  effect  will  be  wrought  upon  the  few  by 
whom  that  law  is  yet  reverenced  and  prized  ?  Certainly, 
not  that  they  will  love  the  law  less,  but  rather  that  they  will 
love  it  more.     If  I  saw  thousands  writhing  in  incurable 


THROUGH    THE    MAKING    VOID    THE    LAW.  459 

agony,  and  could  trace  the  tremendous  disease  to  the  gra- 
dual disuse,  and,  at  length,  final  rejection  of  a  medicine, 
beyond  all  doubt  that  medicine  would  appear  to  me  more 
precious  than  ever;  and  it  would  be  from  the  throwing 
away  of  this  medicine  that  I  best  learnt  its  value.  In  like 
manner,  if  I  can  see  that  the  making  void  God's  law  is  the 
most  effectual  mode  of  covering  a  land  with  wretchedness, 
unquestionably  it  is  in  the  being  made  void  that  this  law 
displays  its  claims  to  my  attachment.  And  if,  therefore,  we 
lived  in  times  when  a  mighty  infidelity  was  pervading  our 
cities  and  our  villages,  and  men  were  advancing  by  rapid 
strides  towards  an  open  contempt,  or  denial  of  God ;  the 
divine  law,  if  we  had  evur  learnt  to  prize  it,  would  commend 
itself  increasingly  to  our  affections,  as  impiety  went  onward 
to  its  consummation.  We  should  more  and  more  recognize 
the  power  of  this  law  to  confer  happiness,  because  we  should 
more  and  more  observe  how  the  despising  it  produced 
misery.  We  should  more  and  more  perceive  in  it  an  engine 
for  counteracting  human  degeneracy,  because  there  would 
be,  on  all  sides,  the  material  of  conviction,  that,  in  setting  it 
aside,  men  sank  to  the  lowest  level  of  degradation.  We 
should  more  and  more  regard  it  as  the  best  boon  which 
God  had  conferred  on  this  creation,  because  we  should  in- 
creasingly discover  that  it  could  only  be  removed  by  sub- 
stituting a  fearful  curse  in  its  stead.  And  would  not  then  this 
law  appear  more  deserving  than  ever  of  our  veneration  and 
attachment  ?  If  we  ever  before  prized  it  above  gold,  should 
we  not  now  prize  it  above  fine  gold  ?  There  are  two  ways 
in  which  the  commandments  of  God  prove  equally  their  ex- 
cellence— by  the  blessed  results  which  follow  on  obedience, 
and  by  the  tremendous  results  which  follow  on  disobedi- 
ence. The  former  are  to  be  seen  when  the  law  is  observed, 
the  latter  when  that  law  is  made  void.  But  since,  in  each 
case,  the  same  truth  is  exhibited — that  of  the  power  of  the 
law  to  confer  happiness — in  each  case,  the  same  reason  is 
given  why  the  law  should  be  increasingly  the  object  of  our 
love. 
We  will  take  a  simple  instance,  and  gather  from  it  the 


460  THE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED 

principle  on  which  we  now  insist.  A  young  person  is  born 
of  religious  parents,  and  educated  in  the  fear  of  the  Almighty. 
But  the  father  and  mother  have  been  gathered  to  the  grave, 
and  the  temptations  of  the  world  prevail  over  their  in- 
structions, and  the  child  becomes  the  irreligious  and  pro- 
fligate. He  passes  from  one  degree  of  wickedness  to  an- 
other, till  at  length,  as  the  perpetrator  of  some  fearful  crime, 
he  waits  the  shame  of  a  public  execution.  And  ill  this  con- 
dition he  is  visited  by  a  clergyman,  who  perhaps  remem- 
bers the  days  of  his  youth,  whilst  his  honored  parents 
were  yet  alive,  and  himself  an  inmate  of  the  village-school. 
It  is  a  grievous  and  sickening  spectacle,  that,  of  one  who 
was  cradled  in  piety,  and  into  whose  opening  intelligence 
were  distilled  the  precepts  of  righteousness,  thus  lying  as  an 
outcast,  branded  with  indignity,  and  expecting  the  penalty 
of  death.  And  the  minister  asks  of  him  the  history  of  his 
guilt,  how  it  came  to  pass  that  he  wandered  so  far,  and  so 
fatally  from  uprightness.  The  whole  is  traced  to  neglect  of 
the  commandments  of  God, — a  neglect  which  began  perhaps 
in  minor  points,  but  rapidly  increased  till  the  whole  law  was 
made  void.  And  we  shall  not  attempt  to  tell  you  with  what 
bitterness  of  soul,  and  what  intenseness  of  self-reproach,  the 
criminal  recalls  the  dying  looks  and  words  of  his  parents,  as 
they  bequeathed  him  the  Bible  as  his  best  treasure,  and  be- 
sought him,  with  many  tears,  to  take  its  precepts  as  his 
guide.  The  uppermost  and  crushing  feeling  in  his  spirit  is, 
that,  had  he  followed  the  parting  advice  of  his  father  and 
mother,  he  would  have  lived  honorably  and  happily,  and 
would  never  have  thus  become  a  bye-word  and  an  execra- 
tion ;  every  thing  earthly  shipwrecked,  and  nothing  heavenly 
secured.  But  Ave  only  want  to  know  what  would  be  the 
thoughts  of  the  minister  in  regard  of  God's  commandments, 
as  he  retired  from  the  cell  where  he  had  delivered  the  mes- 
sages of  the  Gospel.  He  has  been  looking  on  an  instance  of 
the  consequences  of  making  void  the  divine  law.  He  can- 
not but  contrast  what  the  criminal  is,  with  what  he  would 
have  been,  had  he  not  made  void  that  law.  And  does  he 
not  srather  from  the  contrast  a  higher  sense  than  he  had  bp- 


THROUGH    THE    MAKING    VOID    THE    LAW.  4G1 

fore  entertained  of  the  excellence  of  that  law,  and  of  its 
might  in  contributing  to  the  present,  as  well  as  future  wel- 
fare of  mankind  ?  We  can  quite  believe  that,  as  he  retreated 
from  the  overpowering  scene,  his  mind  agonized  by  the 
thought  that  one,  of  whom  he  had  augured  well,  was  thus 
hopelessly  reduced  to  a  desolate  and  ruined  thing,  the  value 
of  God's  law,  as  a  rule  of  human  conduct,  and  a  safeguard 
of  human  happiness,  would  be  felt  by  him  in  a  degree  which 
he  had  never  yet  experienced  ;  and  that  it  would  be  into 
such  a  form  as  this  that  his  reflections  would  shape  them- 
selves,— indeed,  Lord,  he  hath  made  void  thy  law  ;  therefore, 
as  for  me,  "  therefore  I  love  thy  commandments  above  gold, 
yea,  above  fine  gold." 

Now  it  is  not  difficult  thus  to  trace  a  connection  between 
the  making  void  of  God's  law,  and  the  heightened  love 
which  the  righteous  entertain  to  that  law.  The  law  can- 
not be  made  void,  whether  nationally  or  individually,  with- 
out an  accompanying  demonstration  that  it  is  both  design- 
ed and  adapted  to  bless  the  human  race.  And  we  need  not 
add,  that  every  such  demonstration  enhances  the  worth 
of  the  law  in  the  estimation  of  the  righteous,  so  that  the 
transition  is  very  natural  from  the  statement  of  a  general 
profligacy  of  manners  to  that  of  an  increased  love  to  the 
commandments  of  God. 

But  we  have  yet  another  mode  in  which  to  exhibit  the 
connection  between  the  verses,  though  it  may  have  already 
suggested  itself  to  your  minds.  We  have  hither*o  supposed 
the  strengthened  attachment  which  David  expresses  towards 
the  law,  to  have  been  produced  by  the  fact  that  this  law  was 
made  void.  But  we  now  refer  it  to  the  fact  that  it  was  time 
for  God  to  work.  We  consider,  that  is,  that  when  the  Psalmist 
says,  "  therefore  I  love  thy  commandments  above  gold,  yea, 
above  fine  gold,"  the  reason  is  to  be  found  in  the  character 
of  the  times,  in  the  season  being  one  at  which  God  must 
bring  judgments  on  the  earth.  "  Since  thy  law  is  made  void, 
it  is  time  for  thee,  Lord,  to  interfere  in  vengeance;  and,  on 
this  account,  because  wrath  must  be  let  loose,  therefore  T 
love  thy  commandments  above  gold,  yea,  above  fine  o-old.'1 


462  THE    DIVINE    PATIENCE    EXHAUSTED 

And  if  this  be  regarded  as  the  connection  between  the 
verses,  you  will  readily  admit  that  there  is  abundant  force 
in  the  reason  of  the  Psalmist.  If  there  be  one  season  at 
which,  more  than  at  another,  the  righteous  feel  the  worth  of 
revelation,  and  the  blessedness  of  obeying  its  precepts,  the 
season  must  be  that  of  danger  and  trouble.  Whether  the 
danger  and  trouble  be  public  or  domestic  ;  whether  it  be  his 
country,  or  only  his  own  household,  over  which  calamity 
hangs ;  the  man  of  piety  finds  a  consolation  in  religion 
which  makes  him  more  than  ever  prize  the  revealed  will  of 
God.  There  is  a  beauty  and  energy  in  the  Bible  which 
nothing  but  affliction  can  bring  out  and  display  ;  and  men 
know  comparatively  little  of  the  preciousness  of  Scriptural 
promises,  and  the  magnificence  of  Scriptural  hopes,  until 
placed  in  circumstances  of  difficulty  and  distress.  There 
are  always  one  or  two  stations  from  which  you  gain  the  best 
view  of  a  noble  and  diversified  landscape  ;  and  it  is  when 
"  constrained  to  dwell  with  Mesheck,  and  to  have  our  habita- 
tion among  the  tents  of  Kedar,"  that  our  gaze  includes  most 
of  what  is  glorious  and  brilliant  in  the  scheme  of  divine 
mercy.  It  is  the  promise  of  God  in  the  91st  Psalm — a  promise 
addressed  to  every  one  who  makes  God  his  trust, — "  I  will 
be  with  him  in  trouble."  But  when  or  where  is  God  not  with 
us?  Whither  shall  I  go  from  thy  Spirit,  or  whither  shall  I 
fiee  from  thy  presence?  Indeed  we  well  know  that  every 
where  is  the  universe  full  of  Deity,  and  that  at  no  time,  and 
in  no  place,  can  we  be  at  a  distance  from  God  ;  and  yet,  as 
though  in  the  day  of  darkness  and  disaster,  the  Omnipresent 
could  so  redouble  his  presence,  that  every  other  day  should 
be,  in  comparison,  one  of  absence,  the  promise  is,  "I  will  be 
with  him  in  trouble."  And  the  promise  is  so  fulfilled  in  the 
experience  of  the  righteous,  that  they  will  own  their  sor- 
sows  to  have  been  far  more  than  compensated  by  the  conso- 
lations afforded  in  the  hour  of  tribulation,  so  that  it  would 
have  been  clearly  for  their  loss  to  have  escaped  their  trials. 
They  are  gainers  by  their  troubles — for  God  removes  no 
good  without  leaving  a  greater  ;  if  he  take  away  an  earthly 
friend,  he  gfives  them  more  of  himself.  Such  we  affirm  to  be 


THROUGH    THi:    MAKING    VOID    THE    LAW.  403 

the  experience  of  the  righteous  ;  and  we  are  confident  that 
we  might  appeal  to  many  of  our  hearers  for  evidence  that 
Ave  overstate  not  this  experience.  There  are  many  of  you 
who  can  testify  to  a  power  in  the  Bible  of  which  you  were 
not  conscious,  and  to  a  supporting  energy  in  divine  grace, 
which  you  scarcely  suspected,  until  your  households  were 
invaded  by  calamity.  And  if  such  be  the  fact,  what  feeling 
will  be  more  excited  in  the  righteous,  when  compelled  to 
own  that  it  is  time  for  God  to  work,  than  that  of  love  to  the 
divine  law  ?  If  they  see  trouble  approaching,  what  will  they 
do  but  cling  with  greater  earnestness  to  that  which  alone  can 
support  them,  and  which  they  know  will  never  fail  ?  Will 
not  their  affection  to  God's  word  be  vastly  enhanced  by  the 
consciousness  that  they  are  about  to  be  in  circumstances 
when  the  promises  of  that  word  must  be  put  to  the  proof, 
and  by  the  certainty  that  the  putting  them  to  the  proof  will 
issue  in  their  thorough  fulfillment  ?  If  they  have  loved  the 
word  above  gold  in  the  hour  of  prosperity,  they  must  love  it 
above  fine  gold,  as  they  mark  the  gatherings  of  adversity. 

"  It  is  time  for  thee,  Lord,  to  work."  "  They  have  forsaken 
thy  covenant,  thrown  down  thy  altars,  and  slain  thy  pro- 
phets with  the  sword;"  and  the  Judge  of  men  must  arise, 
and  vindicate  his  insulted  authority.  But  I  know  on  whom 
the  mark  of  deliverance  will  be  set,  when  the  men  with  the 
slaughter-weapons  are  commanded  to  pass  through  the  land. 
I  know  that  where  there  is  obedience  to  thy  law,  there  will 
be  security  from  thy  wrath.  And  hence  that  law  is  more 
precious  in  my  sight  than  it  ever  was  before — "  it  is  time 
for  thee  to  work  ;  therefore  I  love  thy  commandments  above 
gold  ;  yea,  above  fine  gold." 

"  It  is  time  for  thee,  Lord,  to  work."  There  is  much  in 
myself  which  requires  the  processes  of  the  refiner,  much  of 
the  corruptible  to  be  removed,  much  of  the  dross  to  be  purged 
away.  But  if  it  be  needful  that  I  be  cast  into  the  furnace  of 
affliction,  I  have  thy  precepts  to  which  to  cling,  thy  promis- 
es on  which  to  rest.  I  find  that  thy  word  comforts  me  in  the 
prospect ;  I  know  that  it  will  sustain  me  in  the  endurance ; 
and  hence,  because  it  is  time  for  thee  to  work,  therefore  is 


464  THE    DIVINE    TATIENCE    EXHAUSTED,  Sec. 

thy  word  dearer  to  me  "  than  the  gold,  yea,  than  the  line 
gold." 

"  It  is  time  for  thee,  Lord,  to  work."  The  season  of  my 
pilgrimage  draws  to  a  close  ;  the  earthly  house  of  this  taber- 
nacle must  be  taken  down  ;  and  the  hour  is  at  hand  when 
thou  wilt  recall  my  spirit,  and  summon  me  to  the  judgment 
seat.  Great  God  !  what  can  be  of  worth  to  me  in  a  time  such 
as  this?  What  can  I  value,  when  every  thing  earthly  is 
slipping  from  my  hold  ?  Thy  commandments — command- 
ments which  direct  me  to  believe  upon  thy  Son — thy  law,  a 
law  so  obeyed  by  the  Mediator  in  my  stead,  that  its  every 
precept  acquits  me,  and  its  every  reward  awaits  me — these 
are  precious  to  me,  unspeakably  more  precious  than  ever 
before.  I  know  that  thy  strange  work  must  be  wrought  on 
me,  the  work  of  dissolution.  I  know  that  the  time  is  come, 
when  I  must  go  hence  and  be  no  more  seen.  But  I  know 
also  that,  "  till  heaven  and  earth  pass,  one  jot  or  one  tittle 
shall  in  no  wise  pass  from  thy  law."  I  know  that  "  blessed 
are  they  that  do  his  commandments,  that  they  may  have 
right  to  the  tree  of  life,  and  may  enter  in  through  the  gates 
into  the  city."  The  nearer,  therefore,  the  approaches  of  death, 
the  more  worthless  appears  every  thing  but  thy  word,  O  my 
God  !  The  gold,  and  the  fine  gold,  can  profit  me  nothing ; 
for  "  it  is  time  for  thee  to  work,"  and  earth,  with  all  its 
treasures,  must  be  left.  But  thy  commandments — a  com- 
mandment that  death  be  swallowed  up  in  victory,  a  com- 
mandment that  the  corruptible  put  on  incorruption,  a  com- 
mandment that  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  rise  as  the 
everlasting  home  of  righteousness — these  give  me  gladness 
as  I  enter  the  dark  valley ;  these  I  would  not  barter  for  the 
richest  and  costliest  of  earthly  things — ■"  it  is  time  for  thee, 
Lord,  to  work  :  therefore  I  love  thy  commandments  above 
gold,  yea,  above  fine  gold." 

We  have  nothing  to  add  but  an  earnest  prayer  that  we 
may  all  be  able  to  say  from  the  heart  with  David,  "  Oh,  how 
I  love  thy  law ;  it  is  my  meditation  all  thy  day." 


ON   THE    STRENGTH  WHICH   FAITH   GAINS 
BY   EXPERIENCE. 


2  Timothy,  1 :  12. 


"  For  I  know  whom  I  have  believed,  and  am  persuaded  that  he 
is  able  to  keep  that  which  I  have  committed  unto  him  against 
that  day." 


59 


SERMON 


ON   THE   STRENGTH  WHICH    FAITH   GAINS   BY 
EXPERIENCE. 


<:  For  I  know  whom  I  have  believed,  and  am  persuaded  that  he  is  able  to 
keep  that  which  I  have  committed  unto  him  against  that  day."— 
2  Timothy,  1  :  12. 

You  will  observe,  if  you  consult  the  context  of  this  pas- 
sage, that  St.  Paul  is  speaking  of  our  Redeemer.  In  the 
tenth  verse  he  had  made  mention  of  our  Savior  Jesus  Christ, 
as  having  abolished  death,  and  brought  life  and  immorta- 
lity to  light  through  the  Gospel.  The  discourse  is  then  con- 
tinuous up  to  the  words  which  I  have  just  read  to  you  ;  so 
that  we  are  not  left  in  doubt  as  to  the  being  upon  whom 
St.  Paul  fastened  his  faith.  It  was  Christ  with  whom  the 
apostle  had  left  some  great  deposit,  and  of  whose  power  and 
faithfulness  he  expresses  his  deep-wrought  persuasion.  And 
it  will  therefore  be  our  business,  in  any  inquiries  to  which 
this  passage  may  lead,  to  bear  carefully  in  mind  that  Deity, 
united  with  humanity  in  the  Mediator's  person,  constituted 
that  object  of  faith  which  had  been  proved  so  trust-worthy 
by  the  teacher  of  the  Gentiles. 

Now  there  is  an  important  distinction  to  be  drawn  between 
experience  and  faith,  and  which  is  clearly  marked  out  to  us 
by  these  words  of  the  apostle.  It  is  certain  that  a  man  can- 
not be  saved  without  faith,  but  it  is  just  as  certain  that  he 
may  be  saved  without  experience.  You  must  all  perceive 
that  if  the  matter  under  review  be  the  power  and  sufficiency 


468  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH 

of  the  Savior,  there  must  be  faith  before  there  can  be  expe- 
rience. We  can  know  nothing  of  Christ,  except  by  rumor 
and  hearsay,  until  we  believe  in  him.  But  unquestionably 
we  might  believe  in  him,  and  then  the  arrest  of  death  com- 
ing upon  us  at  the  instant  of  the  outputting  of  faith,  all 
personal  knowledge  of  him  must  be  referred  to  another  and 
a  higher  state  of  being.  So  that  it  would  be  accurate  to 
say,  that  while  faith  is  indispensable,  experience  is  not  in- 
dispensable to  salvation.  We  have  taken,  however,  the  ex- 
treme case.  And  though  it  be  certainly  supposable  that  a 
man  might  enter  into  heaven  without  experience,  properly 
so  called,  yet  it  is  true,  as  a  general  rule,  that  faith  will  be 
followed  by  experience,  and  that  whosoever  believes  in  Christ 
will  go  on  to  know  whom  he  hath  believed.  We  may  there- 
fore say  of  experience,  that  it  is  a  kind  of  touchstone  to 
which  faith  should  be  brought.  For  whilst  we  would  set 
ourselves  most  earnestly,  and  most  assiduously,  against  the 
resolving  religion  into  a  mere  thing  of  frames  and  of  feel- 
ings, we  are  bound  to  hold  that  it  is  no  matter  of  frigid  or 
heartless  speculation,  but  that  a  real  christian  must  have  a 
real  sense  of  the  power  and  preciousness  of  Christ.  We 
consider  that  it  would  be  altogether  idle  to  maintain  that  a 
man  may  believe  in  Christ  as  a  Savior  for  months  or  years, 
and  yet  have  no  witness  in  himself  to  the  energies  of  that 
Being  towards  whom  his  faith  is  directed.  Faith  is  that 
mighty,  though  mysterious  principle,  which  attaches  a  man 
to  Christ.  And  we  may  fairly  set  it  down  as  impossible  that 
there  should  be  actual  membership  between  ourselves  and 
the  Mediator,  and  yet  nothing  of  personal  practical  acquaint- 
ance with  his  sufficiencies  for  the  office  which  he  fills.  He 
who  believes  will  taste  and  see  that  the  Lord  is  gracious  ; 
and  knowledge  being  superadded  to  faith,  he  will  be  his 
own  testimony  that  the  Bible  is  no  cunningly-devised  fable ; 
but  that  Christ  crucified,  though  unto  the  Jews  a  stumbling- 
block,  and  unto  the  Greeks  foolishness,  is  nevertheless  the 
power  of  God  and  the  wisdom  of  God. 

And  we  think  it  worth  your  while  to  observe,  before  we 
quit  these  introductory  remarks,  that  experience  thus  corro- 


FAITH    GAINS    BY    EXPERIENCE.  460 

borating  faith,  is  at  the  root  of  that  staunchness  which  poor 
men  will  exhibit  when  plied  with  the  arguments  of  the  scep- 
tic.   You  will  not  find  that  an  uneducated  believer  is  more 
easily  overborne  than  a  well  educated,  by  the  doubts  and 
objections  of  infidelity.    If  the  illiterate  man  be  not  so  able 
as  the  instructed,  to  expose  the  hollowness,  and  to  demon- 
strate the  fallacy  of  the  reasoning  by  which  he  is  assailed, 
he  will  be  to  the  full  as  vigorous  in  his  resistance  of  the  at- 
tack, and  will  be  no  more  shaken  from  his  faith  through 
want  of  acquaintance  with  the  evidences  of  Christianity, 
than  if  he  were  equipped  with  all  that  armor  of  proof  which 
has  been  heaped  together  by  the  learned  of  the  earth.    And 
we  hold  the  explanation  of  the  phenomenon  to  be,  that  the 
poor  man  knows  idiom  he  hath  believed.    If  he  can  make 
no  appeal  to  history  and  to  science,  and  so  fetch  no  witness 
from  the  records  of  the  earth  and  its  inhabitants,  he  can  tra- 
vel into  the  world  which  lies  within  himself;  and  he  gathers 
from  what  has  been  transacted  there,  and  experienced  there, 
a  mightier  testimony  than  was  ever  wrung  from  external 
evidence.    When  he  began  to  believe,  it  may  be  true  that 
he  could  give  but  little  account  of  any  groundwork  on  which 
he  builded  his  faith.    But  as  he  goes  on  believing,  his  faith 
may  be  said  to  become  more  and  more  built  upon  know- 
ledge ;  and  there  will  be  wrought  in  him  gradually,  through 
his  own  personal  experience  of  the  power  and  faith  fulness 
of  the  Savior,  something  of  the  persuasion  which  is  express- 
ed by  St.  Paul,  and  which  will  more  than  supply  the  place 
of  those  ramparts  against  infidelity  which  have  been  thrown 
up  by  the  labors  of  the  champions  of  Christianity.     And 
though  we  have  directed  our  remarks  to  the  case  of  the  poor 
and  the  illiterate,  we  would  not  have  it  thought  that  they 
are  inapplicable  to  others.    It  is  quite  evident  that  the  great 
apostle  himself,  than  whom  there  hath  never  arisen  a  man 
better  able  to  demonstrate,  on  external  grounds,  that  Jesus 
was  the  Christ,  strengthened  his  faith  by  his  knowledge,  and 
fetched  out  of  his  own  experience  his  choicest  proof  of  the 
fullness  which  is  laid  up  in  the  Savior.    And  thus  with  our- 
selves ;  whatever  our  rank  in  society,  and  whatever  our 


470  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH 

advantages  of  education,  we  must  place  ourselves  on  the 
same  level  with  the  mean  and  the  uninstructed,  when 
searching  out  the  best  evidence  that  Christ  can  save  to  the 
uttermost ;  and  there  will  never  be  a  proof  half  so  rigid,  and 
half  so  overwhelming,  of  the  ability  of  the  Mediator  to  guard 
the  bodies  and  the  souls  of  his  people,  as  that  which  we  de- 
rive from  things  already  done  for  us,  in  the  warfare  which 
we  prosecute  against  Satan  and  the  world. 

We  will  now  pass  on,  from  these  general  remarks,  to  a 
closer  examination  of  the  subject  brought  before  us  by  our 
text.  We  ask  you  once  more  to  observe,  that  with  St.  Paul, 
experience  came  evidently  in  to  the  corroboration  of  faith  ; 
so  that  the  apostle's  faith  was  stronger,  and  that,  too,  as  a  con- 
sequence of  what  he  knew  of  Christ,  than  when  he  had  first 
of  all  started  from  the  ranks  of  the  persecutor.  He  had  gone 
through  affliction  and  toil  in  the  service  of  the  Savior,  and 
he  felt  assured  that  now  the  period  was  not  far  distant,  when 
he  should  be  called  to  brave  martyrdom  in  his  cause.  But  in 
all  the  trials  through  which  he  had  passed,  there  had  been 
ministered  unto  him  such  abundance  of  support  and  conso- 
lation, that  former  troubles,  in  place  of  disheartening,  only 
nerved  him  for  the  endurance  of  fresh.  He  was  nothing  dis- 
quieted at  the  prospect  of  imprisonment  and  death.  In  carv- 
ing his  way  through  opposition  already  overcome,  he  had 
realized  so  much  of  the  sustaining  might  of  the  Redeemer, 
that  he  could  look  forward  with  a  noble  assurance  to  a  final, 
and  still  fiercer  combat.  If  indeed  there  had  been  failure  in 
the  communications  of  assistance — if,  depending  on  the  pro- 
mised support,  he  had  gone  to  the  battle,  and  there  met  with 
discomfiture — he  might  have  been  conscious  of  something 
akin  to  mistrust  and  shrinking,  when  he  saw  his  foes  muster- 
ing for  the  last  assault.  But  he  knew  whom  he  had  be- 
lieved ;  he  had  put  Christ,  as  it  were,  to  the  proof,  and  ob- 
tained nothing  but  an  evidence,  every  day  strengthened, 
that  all  the  promises  in  him  are  yea,  and  in  him  amen,  to  the 
glory  of  God  the  Father.  And  now,  though  he  had  deposited 
his  all  with  the  Redeemer, — though  he  had  gathered,  so  to 
speak,  his  every  interest,  time  and  eternity,  into  one  cast, 


FAITH    GAINS    BY    EXPERIENCE.  471 

and  staked  the  whole  upon  the  faithfulness  of  Christ, — he 
was  not  disturbed  with  the  lightest  apprehension  of  risk  or 
peril ;  but,  looking  composedly  on  the  advancing  tide,  which, 
upon  human  calculations,  was  to  sweep  him  away,  and  bury 
all  his  hopes  in  its  depths,  he  could  avouch  his  unflinching 
persuasion,  that  Jesus  was  able  to  keep  that  which  he  had 
committed  unto  hifti  against  that  day,  when  he  shoidd  be 
glorified  in  his  saints,  and  admired  in  all  them  that  believe. 

Such,  we  think,  is  the  statement  of  our  text,  when  taken 
in  the  breadth  of  its  meaning.  And  if  we  now  consider  the 
passage  as  descriptive  simply  of  what  is,  or  what  ought  to 
be,  the  experience  of  every  believer  in  Christ,  we  deduce 
from  it  two  facts,  each  of  which  deserves  the  best  of  your 
attention. 

In  the  first  place,  we  ascertain  that  the  believer 

OBTAINS    A    KNOWLEDGE    OF     CHRIST. 

In  the  second  place,  we  determine  that  the  know- 
ledge THUS  OBTAINED  IS  SUCH  AS  TO  GENERATE  CON- 
FIDENCE. 

We  will  give  ourselves  to  the  examination  of  these  facts 
in  succession,  discussing,  at  the  same  time,  such  collateral 
truths  as  shall  seem  presented  by  the  words  of  the  apostle. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  a  believer  obtains  a  know- 
ledge of  Christ.  Now  we  think  that  it  may  be  both 
from  his  own  experience,  and  from  the  experience  of  others, 
that  a  christian  knows  who?n  he  hath  believed.  You  may 
indeed  argue,  that  so  far  as  the  experience  of  others  is  con- 
cerned, there  is  no  necessity  that  a  man  should  be  a  believer 
in  Christ  in  order  to  his  obtaining  acquaintance  with  Christ. 
Assuredly  any  one,  whatsoever  his  own  personal  sentiments 
on  religion,  may  give  attention  to  the  biography  of  God- 
fearing men,  and  gather  from  the  dealings  of  which  they 
have  been  the  subjects,  all  the  information  which  they  fur- 
nish with  regard  to  the  character  of  the  Mediator.  But  we 
deny  this  proposition,  though  it  may  seem  too  simple  to  ad- 
mit of  any  question.  Unless  a  man  be  himself  a  converted 
man,  he  cannot  enter  into  the  facts  and  the  feelings  which 
this  biography  lays  open.    The  whole  record  will  wear  to 


472  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH 

him  an  air  of  strangeness  and  of  mystery  ;  and  if  he  have 
the  candor  not  to  resolve  into  fanaticism  the  registered  ex- 
perience, he  will  be  forced  to  pass  it  over  as  thoroughly  un- 
intelligible. If  a  man  know  nothing  of  chemistry,  and  if  he 
take  up  a  treatise  upon  chemistry,  he  is  at  a  loss  in  every 
page,  and  can  make  no  way,  through  want  of  that  acquaint- 
ance with  the  subject  which  the  work  presupposes.  And  if 
the  author  be  giving  something  of  his  own  history,  and  if  he 
carry  the  reader  into  his  laboratory,  and  count  over  to  him 
experiments,  and  bring  out  results,  why,  the  man  who  is  no 
chemist,  and  who  is  therefore  altogether  ignorant  of  the 
properties  of  the  substances  on  which  the  scientific  man 
works,  will  understand  not,  or  appreciate  not,  the  discoveries 
which  are  reached  of  the  secrets  of  nature  ;  but  with  all  the 
apparatus  of  knowledge  spread  before  him,  will  remain  as 
ignorant  as  ever,  through  the  not  having  mastered  the  alpha- 
bet of  chemistry.  And  what  is  true  of  such  a  science  as 
chemistry,  we  hold  to  be  equally  true  of  practical  Christian- 
ity. The  experiments,  if  we  may  so  speak,  which  have 
been  made  in  the  soul  of  a  man  of  piety  and  prayer, — expe- 
riments of  the  power  of  grace  and  of  indwelling  sin — and 
the  results  also  which  have  been  derived  from  such  experi- 
ments ;  we  would  certainly  contend  that  these  cannot  be 
understood,  and  cannot  be  entered  into,  unless  the  individual 
who  peruses  the  record  have  something  of  fellow-feeling 
with  the  subject  of  the  biography— unless,  that  is,  there 
shall  have  passed  on  him  that  renovating  change  which 
has  brought  him  out  of  nominal  into  real  Christianity.  After 
all,  the  deriving  knowledge  of  Christ  from  the  experience 
of  others  must  be  through  an  act  of  faith.  It  is  by  belief  in 
testimony,  that  what  has  been  done  for  our  fellow-men  by 
the  Redeemer,  is  turned  into  information  to  ourselves  of  his 
sufficiencies  for  his  office.  So  that  it  were  fair  to  argue,  that 
a  man  must  have  faith,  and  therefore  religious  experience 
for  himself,  otherwise  he  possesses  not  the  faculty  by  which 
to  extract  knowledge  from  the  religious  experience  of  others. 
But  let  a  man  be  a  believer  in  Christ,  and  every  day  of  his 
life  will  bring  him  intelligence,  from  external  testimony,  of 


FAITH    GAINS    BY    EXPERIENCE.  473 

the  worth  of  the  Being  on  whom  he  fastens  his  faith.  The 
witnesses  who  stand  out  and  attest  the  excellences  of  the 
Mediator,  occupy  the  whole  scale  of  intelligence,  from  the 
Creator  downwards,  through  every  rank  of  the  creature. 
The  man  of  faith  hears  the  Father  himself  bearing  testimony 
by  a  voice  from  heaven,  "  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  in  whom 
I  am  well  pleased?  He  hears  angels  and  archangels  laud- 
ing and  magnifying  Christ's  glorious  name  :  for  do  not  the 
winged  hierarchies  of  heaven  bow  to  him  the  knee,  and  that 
too  as  the  consequence  of  his  work  of  mediation  ?  He  hears 
patriarchs  who  lived  in  the  infancy  of  the  world ;  prophets 
who  took  up  in  succession  the  mighty  strain,  and  sent  it  on 
from  century  to  century  ;  apostles  who  went  out  to  the  bat- 
tie  with  idolatry,  and  counted  not  their  lives  dear  to  them, 
so  that  they  might  plant  the  cross  amid  the  wilds  of  super- 
stition : — he  hears  all  these,  with  one  heart  and  one  voice, 
witnessing  to  Jesus,  as  the  Son  of  the  Highest,  the  Savior  of 
the  lost.  And  he  hears,  moreover,  the  martyrs  and  the  con- 
fessors of  every  generation  ;  the  saints  who  have  held  fast 
their  allegiance  on  the  rack  and  in  the  furnace ;  the  noble 
champions  who  have  risen  up  in  the  days  of  a  declining 
church,  and  shed  their  blood  like  water  in  defence  of  the 
purity  of  doctrine ;  he  hears  the  men  of  v)ho?n  the  world 
was  not  worthy,  uttering  an  unflinching  attestation  to  the 
willingness  and  ability  of  Christ  to  succor  those  who  give 
themselves  to  his  service.  And  he  hears,  finally,  a  voice 
from  the  thousands  who,  in  more  private  stations,  have 
taken  Christ  as  their  Lord  and  their  God  ;  who,  in  depend- 
ance  on  his  might,  have  gone  unobtrusively  through  duty 
and  trial,  and  then  have  lain  down  on  the  death-bed,  and 
worn  a  smile  amid  the  decayings  of  the  body, — and  this 
voice  bears  a  witness,  staunch  and  decisive,  that  He  in  whom 
they  have  trusted,  has  proved  himself  all-sufficient  to  deliver. 
And  if  we  do  right  in  arguing  that  there  is  poured  in  gra- 
dually upon  a  believer  this  scarcely  measurable  evidence  to 
the  power  and  faithfulness  of  Christ,  will  it  not  come  to  pass 
that  he  grows  every  day  more  acquainted  with  the  excel- 
lencies of  the  Savior;  so  that,  by  gathering  in  from  the  ac- 
GO 


474  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH 

cumulated  stores  of  the  testimony  of  others,  he  will  be  able? 
with  a  continually  strengthening  assurance,  to  declare,  I 
know  whom  I  have  believed. 

If  it  were  possible  that  this  testimony  of  others  should  be 
appreciated  and  grasped  without  faith,  or  without  conver- 
sion, then  it  would  be  certain  that  a  vast  way  might  be  made 
in  the  knowledge  of  Christ,  by  men  whose  own  experience 
could  furnish  no  information.  But,  forasmuch  as  on  the 
grounds  already  laid  down,  there  must  be  a  prepared  soil  for 
the  reception  of  these  testimonies  to  Christ,  we  think  it  fair 
to  contend  that  no  man  can  know  Christ  unless  he  believe 
in  Christ,  even  though  the  knowledge  may  be  fetched  from 
the  recorded  attestations  of  every  order  of  intelligence. 

It  is  not,  however,  so  much  from  what  is  told  him  by 
others,  as  from  what  he  experiences  in  himself,  that  a  be- 
liever knows  whom  he  hath  believed.  You  will  observe  that 
as  a  result  of  his  acting  faith  upon  Christ,  he  is  engaged  in 
a  moral  warfare  with  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil.  He 
goes  to  the  combat  in  no  strength  of  his  own,  but  simply 
in  the  might  of  his  risen  Redeemer.  And  the  question  is, 
whether  thus  putting  to  the  proof  the  Savior  of  men,  he  ob- 
tains an  evidence  for,  or  an  evidence  against,  his  ability  to 
help  and  sustain?  And  can  we  hesitate  as  to  the  side  on 
which  the  testimony  turns  ?  If  a  believer  is  at  any  time 
overborne  in  the  conflict ;  if  lust  gain  the  victory,  or  the 
world  for  a  while  re-assert  the  sovereignty  of  which  it  hath 
been  stripped ;  shall  it  be  supposed  for  a  moment  that  such 
result  may  be  ascribed  to  deficiency  in  the  assistance  which 
Christ  lives  to  communicate?  If  a  christian  is  overthrown, 
it  is  because  he  is  surprised  off  his  guard.  But  is  Christ 
chargeable  with  his  being  off  his  guard  ?  It  is  because  he  is 
remiss  in  prayer,  or  because  he  parleys  with  temptation,  or 
because  he  avails  not  himself  of  the  armor  provided  by  God. 
But  is  Christ  chargeable  with  his  negligence,  with  his  inde- 
cision, with  his  carelessness  in  the  use  of  instituted  means  ? 
We  may  lay  it  down  as  an  ascertained  truth,  that  Christ 
never  failed  a  believer  in  his  hour  of  combat.  The  believer 
may  be  mastered  ;  the  enemy  may  come  in  like  a  flood,  and 


FAITH    GAINS    BY    EXPERIENCE.  475 

there  may  be  no  efficient  resistance  opposed  to  the  inrush. 
But  whensoever  there  is  a  meeting  of  the  foe  in  the  strength 
of  the  Lord,  there  is  a  realization  of  the  truth  of  the  pro- 
mise, My  grace  is  sufficient  for  thee.  God  is  faithful, 
who  will  not  suffer  you  to  be  tempted  above  that  ye  are 
able.  God,  so  to  speak,  measures  and  weighs  every  trial 
before  he  permits  it  to  be  allotted.  He  sets  it  side  by  side 
with  the  circumstances  and  strength  of  the  party  upon 
whom  it  is  to  fall.  And  if  he  ever  perceive  that  the  tempta- 
tion overpasses  the  capacity  of  resistance,  so  that,  if  thus 
tempted,  an  individual  would  be  tempted  above  that  he  is 
able ;  then  God  is  represented  to  us  as  refusing  to  permit 
the  appointment,  and  therefore  as  watching  that  believers 
may  never  be  unavoidably  brought  into  such  a  position  that 
their  yielding  to  evil  shall  be  a  matter  of  necessity.  And  it 
certainly  must  follow  from  these  scriptural  premises,  that 
the  being  overpowered  can  never  be  charged  on  a  defi- 
ciency in  succor ;  and  that,  though  it  were  idle  to  plead  for 
the  possibility  of  our  attaining  perfection,  yet  the  impossi- 
bility arises  not  from  God's  communicating  too  little  of  assist- 
ance, but  solely  from  our  own  want  of  vigilance  in  appro- 
priating and  applying  the  freely  offered  aids. 

We  take  it,  therefore,  as  the  experience  of  a  believer,  that, 
the  Captain  of  Salvation  strengthens  his  followers  for  the 
moral  conflict  to  which  they  are  pledged.  How  often,  when 
Satan  has  brought  all  his  powers  to  the  assault,  and  the  man 
has  seemed  within  a  hair-breadth  of  yielding,  how  often  has 
an  earnest  prayer,  thrown  like  an  arrow  to  the  mercy-seat, 
caused  Christ  to  appear,  as  he  once  did  to  Joshua,  the  captain 
of  the  Lord's  host ;  and  the  tide  of  battle  has  been  turned, 
and  the  foe  has  been  routed,  and  the  oppressed  one  deliver- 
ed !  How  often,  when  an  evil  passion  has  almost  goaded 
the  believer  into  compliance  with  its  dictates,  and  there 
seemed  no  longer  any  likelihood  of  its  being  kept  down  or 
ejected,  how,  by  dealing  with  this  passion  as  dealt  the 
apostles  of  old  with  foul  spirits  which  had  entered  into  the 
body,  calling  over  it  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus, — how  often1, 
we  say,  has  the  passion  been  cast  out,  and  the  possessed 


476  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH 

man  restored  quickly  to  soundness  and  peace  !  How  often, 
in  looking  forward  to  duties  imposed  on  him  by  his  christian 
profession,  has  the  believer  been  conscious  of  a  kind  of 
shrinking  at  the  prospect !  It  has  seemed  to  him  almost 
hopeless  that  he  should  bear  up  under  the  pressure  of  labor  ; 
that  he  should  meet  faithfully  every  claim  upon  his  time 
and  attention  ;  and  that  he  should  discharge,  with  any  thing 
of  becoming  carefulness,  the  various  offices  with  which  he 
sees  himself  intrusted.  But  when  he  has  reflected  on  himself 
as  simply  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  his  Master,  and  re- 
solved to  go  on  in  a  single  dependence  on  the  helps  which 
are  promised  through  Christ,  has  not  the  mountain  become 
literally  a  plain  ;  so  that  duties  which,  at  a  distance,  seemed 
altogether  overwhelming,  have  proved,  when  entered  upon, 
the  very  reverse  of  oppressive  !  And  what  shall  we  assert 
to  be  the  result  of  this  continual  experience  of  the  sufficien- 
cies of  Christ,  unless  it  be  that  the  believer  knows  whom  he 
hath  believed  ?  The  stone  which  God  laid  in  Zion  becomes 
to  him,  according  to  the  prophetical  description,  a  tried  stone. 
He  no  longer  needs  to  appeal  to  the  experience  of  others, 
He  has  the  witness  in  himself,  and  he  can  use  the  language 
which  the  Samaritans  used  to  the  woman  who  first  told 
them  of  Christ  as  the  prophet,  —  We  have  heard  him  our- 
selves, and  know  that  this  is  indeed  the  Christ,  the  Savior 
of  the  world. 

There  can  be  nothing  clearer  than  the  connection  between 
experience  and  knowledge.  If  I  meet  difficulties  in  Christ's 
strength,  and  master  them ;  if  I  face  enemies  in  Christ's 
strength,  and  vanquish  them  ;  if  I  undertake  duties  in 
Christ's  strength,  and  discharge  them, — the  difficulties,  and 
the  enemies,  and  the  duties  being  such  as  I  could  not 
grapple  with  by  my  own  unassisted  might, — then  my  expe- 
rience is  actually  knowledge  ;  for  experiencing  Christ  to  be 
faithful  and  powerful,  I  certainly  know  Christ  to  be  faithful 
and  powerful. 

We  may  yet  further  observe,  that  knowledge,  the  produce 
of  experience,  is  of  a  broader  extent  than  our  foregoing  re- 
marks would  appear  to  mark  out.    The  believer  in  Christ,  if 


FAITH    GAINS    BY    EXPERIENCE.  477 

indeed  he  live  not  so  far  below  his  privileges  as  almost  to 
forfeit  the  title,  must  be  one  who,  having  felt  the  burden  of 
sin,  has  come  weary  and  heavy  laden  to  the  Savior,  and  ob- 
tained the  removal  of  the  oppression  from  his  conscience  ; 
and  will  it  not  therefore  hold  good,  that,  through  experience, 
he  knows  Christ  as  the  Lamb  of  God  which  taketh  away 
the  sin  of  the  world  ?  He  must,  moreover,  be  one  who, 
painfully  alive  to  his  own  utter  inability  to  obey  God's  law 
for  himself,  has  turned  to  Jesus  in  search  of  a  surety,  and 
found,  in  that  unvarying  faithfulness  with  which  he  acted 
out  the  precepts  of  the  Father,  just  that  procuring  cause  of 
acceptance  which  is  required  by  the  fallen  ;  and  will  it  not 
therefore  be  true,  that  through  experience  he  knows  Christ 
as  the  Lord  our  Righteousness  ?  He  must,  moreover — at 
least  if  he  have  traveled  at  all  beyond  the  very  outset  of  the 
life  of  faith — have  been  visited  with  spiritual  trials,  and  per- 
haps also  with  temporal  ;  and  he  will  have  carried  his  sor- 
rows to  the  Redeemer,  as  to  one  who  can  be  touched  with 
the  feeling  of  our  infirmities,  and  he  will  have  obtained  the 
oil  and  the  wine  of  consolation  ;  and  will  he  not  therefore, 
from  this  his  experience,  know  Christ  as  that  gracious  being 
who  comforteth  them  that  are  cast  down,  who  bindeth  up 
the  broken-hearted  ?  He  must  yet  further  be  one  who,  con- 
scious that  the  world  which  lieth  within  himself  is  over- 
spread with  defilement,  and  that  he  is  possessed  of  no  native 
energy  by  which  to  carry  purity  into  the  recesses  of  the 
heart,  has  turned  to  Jesus  in  order  that  he  might  obtain  the 
inworking  of  a  holiness  which  should  fit  him  for  heaven, 
and  has  realized  the  processes  of  an  on-going  sanctification  ; 
and  does  not  then  his  experience  cause  him  to  know  Christ 
as  made  unto  his  people  wisdom,  and  righteousness,  and 
sanctification,  and  redemption  ?  He  must,  finally,  be  one 
who,  feeling  himself  no  creature  of  a  day,  but  sublimely  con- 
scious that  immortality  throbbed  in  his  veins,  has  looked 
fruitlessly  on  earth  for  an  object  which  might  fill  his  soul  ; 
and  then  fastening  upon  God  manifest  in  the  flesh,  has 
found  the  enormous  void  occupied  to  the  overflow, — and 
hath  not  then  his  experience  led  him  to  know  Christ  as 


478  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH 

formed  in  his  people  the  hope  of  glory  ?  We  might  extend 
this  adduction  of  particulars  ;  but  we  think  that  what  has 
been  already  advanced  will  suffice  for  our  carrying  you 
along  with  us  in  the  conclusion,  that  where  faith  resides, 
there  must  be  experience  ;  and  that  experience,  in  natural 
course,  produces  knowledge, — nay,  rather  that  experience  is 
identical  with  knowledge  ;  so  that  all  true  believers,  who 
have  walked  a  while  in  the  heaven-ward  path,  may  declare 
with  St.  Paul,  I  know  whom  I  have  believed. 

And  we  would  again  press  upon  your  attention  the  im- 
portant fact,  that  as  faith,  being  followed  by  experience,  will 
issue  in  knowledge,  so  the  knowledge  thus  acquired  will  tell 
back  upon  the  faith,  and  throw  into  it  nerve  and  stability. 
We  are  persuaded  that,  by  a  wonderful  and  most  merciful 
arrangement,  God  hath  ordered  that  experience  should 
grow  into  such  a  witness  for  the  truth  of  Christianity,  that 
scepticism,  though  brought  forward  with  all  that  is  pointed 
in  argument  and  splendid  in  oratory,  hath  literally  no  like- 
lihood whatever  of  success,  even  when  the  attack  is  on  a 
believer  who  has  nothing  of  human  weapon  at  his  disposal. 
If  you  sent  the  most  accomplished  of  infidels  into  the  cot- 
tage of  the  meanest  of  our  peasants,  or  into  the  workshop  of 
the  poorest  of  our  artisans, — the  peasant,  or  the  artisan,  being- 
supposed  a  true  believer  in  Christ — we  should  entertain  not 
the  slightest  apprehension  as  to  the  issue  of  a  conflict  be- 
tween parties  apparently  so  ill-matched  ;  but  on  the  con- 
trary, should  await  the  result  in  the  most  perfect  assurance, 
that  though  there  might  be  no  taking  off  the  objections  of 
the  infidel,  there  would  be  no  overthrowing  the  faith  of  the 
believer.  Scepticism  can  make  no  way  where  there  is  real 
Christianity  ;  all  its  triumphs  are  won  on  the  field  of  nomi- 
nal Christianity.  And  it  is  a  phenomenon  which  might,  at 
first  sight,  well  draw  our  amazement,  that  just  where  we 
should  look  for  the  least  of  resistance,  and  where  we  should 
conclude  that,  almost  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  sophistry  of 
the  infidel  might  enter  and  carry  every  thing  before  it — 
that  there  we  find  a  power  of  withstanding  which  is  perhaps 
even  greater  than  could  be  exhibited  in  a  higher  and  more 


FAITH    GAINS    BY    EXPERIENCE.  479 

educated  circle — so  that  the  believing  mechanic  shall  outdo 
the  believing  philosopher  in  the  vigor  with  which  he  repels 
the  insinuations  of  a  sceptic.  We  are  not  arguing  that  the 
mechanic  will  make  the  most  way  in  confuting  the  sceptic. 
On  the  contrary,  there  will  be  a  vast  probability  against  his 
being  able  to  expose  the  fallacy  of  a  solitary  objection.  But 
then  he  will  take  refuge  simply  in  his  experience.  He  will 
not,  as  the  philosopher  may  do,  divide  himself  between  ex- 
perience and  argument.  If  he  have  no  apparatus  at  his  com- 
mand with  which  to  meet,  and  dissect,  and  lay  bare,  a 
hollow,  but  plausible  reasoning,  he  has  his  own  knowledge 
to  which  to  turn — and  then  the  whole  question  lies  between 
i«  theory  and  a  matter-of-fact.  His  knowledge  is  matter-of- 
fact — and  argument  will  always  be  worthless  if  it  set  itself 
against  matter-of-fact.  He  knows  ichom  he  hath  believed. 
There  may  be  in  this  knowledge  none  of  the  elements  of 
another  man's  conviction, — but  there  is  to  himself  the  ma- 
terial of  an  overpowering  assurance.  It  might  be  quite  im- 
possible to  take  this  knowledge,  and  make  it  available  as  an 
argument  with  which  to  bear  down  on  his  infidel  assailant. 
It  is  a  visionary  thing  to  his  opponent — but  it  is  a  matter  of 
fact  to  himself.  And  we  contend  that  in  this  lies  the  grand 
secret  of  a  poor  man's  capability  of  resisting  the  advancings 
of  infidelity.  It  is  no  theory  with  him  that  Jesus  is  the 
Christ.  It  is  no  speculation  that  the  Gospel  offers  a  remedy 
for  those  moral  disorders  which  sin  hath  fastened  on  the 
creature.  He  has  not  merely  read  the  Bible — he  has  felt  the 
Bible.  He  has  not  merely  heard  of  the  medicine — he  has 
taken  the  medicine.  And  now,  we  again  say,  when  you 
would  argue  with  him  against  Christianity,  you  argue  with 
him  against  matter-of-fact.  You  argue  against  the  existence 
of  fire,  to  a  man  who  has  been  scorched  by  the  flame  ;  and 
against  the  existence  of  water,  to  a  man  who  has  been 
drenched  in  the  depths;  and  against  the  existence  of  light, 
to  a  man  who  has  looked  out  on  the  landscape  ;  and  argu- 
ment can  make  no  head  when  it  sets  itself  against  matter- 
of-fact. 
If  I  had  labored  under  a  painful  and  deadly  disease, — 


480  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH 

and  if  I  had  gone  to  a  physician — and  if  I  had  received 
from  him  a  medicine  which  brought  the  health  back  into 
my  limbs — what  success  would  attend  the  most  clever  of 
reasoners  who  should  set  himself  to  prove  to  me  that  no 
such  being  as  this  physician  had  ever  existed,  or  that  there 
was  no  virtue  whatsoever  in  the  draught  which  had  wrought 
in  me  with  so  healing  an  energy?  He  might  argue  with  a 
keenness  and  a  shrewdness  which  left  me  quite  overmatch- 
ed. There  might  be  an  ingenuity  in  his  historic  doubts 
with  regard  to  the  existence  of  the  physician ;  and  there 
might  be  an  apparent  science  in  his  analysis  of  the  medicine, 
and  his  exposure  of  its  worthlessness ;  and  I,  on  my  part, 
might  be  quite  unable  to  meet  him  on  his  own  ground,  to 
show  the  fault  and  the  falsehood  of  his  reasoning.  But  you 
can  never  suppose  that  my  incapacity  to  refute  argument 
would  lead  me  to  the  giving  up  a  matter-of-fact.  I  should 
just  be  in  the  case  of  the  man  in  the  Gospel,  to  whom  Christ 
had  given  sight,  and  whom  the  Pharisees  plied  with  doubts, 
derived  from  the  presumed  sinfulness  of  the  Savior,  in  re- 
gard to  the  possibility  of  the  miracle.  I  should  answer  with 
this  man,  only  varying  the  language,  so  that  it  might  square 
with  the  form  of  objection  :  Whether  he  be  a  sinner  or  no,  I 
know  not ;  one  tiling  I  know,  that  ivhereas  I  id  as  blind,  now 
I  see.  And  precisely,  in  like  manner,  a  believer,  with  no 
other  resources  at  his  disposal,  can  throw  himself  unhesita- 
tingly on  his  own  experience  ;  and  this,  rendering  Christian- 
ity to  him  all  matter  of  fact,  makes  him  proof  against  the 
subtleties  of  the  most  insidious  infidelity. 

So  that  we  require  of  you  to  learn  from  the  subject  under 
review,  that  God  hath  woven  into  true  religion  all  the  ele- 
ments of  a  successful  resistance  to  cavil  and  objection,  leav- 
ing not  the  very  poorest,  and  the  most  illiterate  of  his  people 
open  to  the  inroad  of  the  enemies  of  Christianity ;  but  caus- 
ing that  there  rise  up  from  their  own  experience  such  ram- 
parts of  strength,  that  if  they  have  no  artillery  with  which 
to  battle  at  the  adversary,  there  is  at  least  no  risk  of  their 
own  citadel  being  stormed. 

And  though  we  have  not  time  to  follow  out  at  greater 


FAITH    GAINS    BY    EXPERIENCE  481 

length  the  train  of  thought  which  this  portion  of  our  subject 
originates,  we  commend  to  your  attention,  as  worthy  of  being 
most  carefully  pondered  over,  the  provision  which  is  made  in 
experience  against  infidelity.  We  may  have  been  accustomed 
to  regard  the  evidences  of  Christianity  as  lying  out  of  reach 
of  the  poor  and  the  illiterate  ;  and  we  may  have  looked  with 
a  peculiar  dread  on  the  descendings  of  the  agents  of  scepti- 
cism to  the  lower  and  less  equipped  ranks  of  society.  And 
beyond  all  question,  if  you  just  take  the  uneducated  mass  of 
our  population,  there  is  a  far  greater  risk  than  with  the  well 
educated,  that  the  diffusion  amongst  them  of  infidel  publica- 
tions will  issue  in  the  warping  them  from  the  faith  of  their 
fathers.  There  may  be  something  like  stamina  of  resistance 
in  the  higher  and  the  middling  classes ;  for  if  indifferent  to 
religion,  they  may  be  idolaters  of  reason,  and  they  will 
therefore  require  something  better  than  worn-out  and  flimsy 
objections  before  they  throw  away  as  false,  what  has  been 
handed  down  to  them  as  true.  But  when  infidelity  goes 
down,  so  to  speak,  to  the  inferior  and  less  cultivated  soils, 
there  is  certainly  a  fearful  probability  that  it  may  scatter, 
unmolested,  the  seeds  of  a  dark  harvest  of  apostasy ;  and 
that  men  who  have  no  reason  to  give  why  they  are  even 
nominally  christians,  will  be  wrought  upon  by  the  most 
empty  and  common-place  arguments,  to  put  from  them 
Christianity  as  a  scheme  of  falsehood  and  priestcraft. 

We  are  thoroughly  alive  to  this  danger  ;  and  we  think  it 
not  to  be  disputed,  that  the  incapacity  of  the  lower  classes  to 
meet  infidelity  on  any  fair  terms  exposes  them,  in  a  more 
than  ordinary  degree,  to  the  risk  of  being  prevailed  on  to 
exchange  nominal  religion  for  no  religion  at  all.  But  this, 
we  would  have  you  observe,  is  the  sum  total  of  the  risk. 
We  have  no  fears  for  any  thing,  excepting  nominal  Chris- 
tianity. And  though  we  count  that  the  giving  up  even  of 
nominal  Christianity  would  just  be  equivalent  to  the  over- 
spreading a  country  with  ferocity  and  barbarism,  there  being 
none  of  the  charities  of  life  in  the  train  of  infidelity — yet  we 
think  it  a  cause  of  mighty  gratulation,  that  real  Christianity 
has  so  much  of  the  vis  inertia  in  its  nature,  that  we  are 
61 


482  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH 

quit  of  all  dread  of  its  being  borne  down  even  in  a  wide- 
spread apostasy.  Is  it  not  a  beautiful  truth,  that  the  well 
equipped  agents  of  infidelity  might  go  successively  to  the 
library  of  the  pious  theologian,  and  the  hovel  of  the  pious 
laborer,  and  make  not  one  jot  more  impression  on  the  unin- 
structed  subject  of  godliness,  than  on  the  deep-read  master 
of  all  the  evidences  of  our  faith  ?  Oh,  we  take  it  for  an  ex- 
quisite proof  of  the  carefulness  of  God  over  his  people,  that 
the  poor  cottager,  in  the  midst  of  his  ignorance  of  all  that 
external  witness  which  we  are  wont  to  appeal  to  as  gloriously 
conclusive  on  the  claims  of  Christianity,  is  not  to  be  over- 
come by  the  most  subtle  or  the  fiercest  assault ;  but  that 
whilst  men  of  a  higher  education  will  lay  empires  and  cen- 
turies under  a  rigid  contribution,  and  sweep  in  auxiliaries 
from  the  disclosures  of  science,  and  walk  with  a  dominant 
step  the  firmament,  gathering  conviction  from  the  rich  as- 
semblings of  stars ;  this  child  of  poverty,  but  at  the  same 
time  of  grace,  shall  throw  himself  upon  himself;  and  turn- 
ing experience  into  evidence,  be  inaccessible  to  the  best 
concerted  attack ;  and  make  answer,  without  flinching,  to 
every  cavil  and  every  objection,  i"  know  whom  I  have  be- 
lieved. His  faith,  whatsoever  it  be  at  first,  becomes  soon  a 
faith  built  upon  knowledge  ;  and  then,  if  not  skillful  enough 
to  show  his  adversary  wrong,  he  is  too  much  his  own  wit- 
ness to  give  harborage  to  a  fear  that  he  himself  is  not  rig-lit. 

no  o 

But  enough  on  the  first  fact  which  we  proposed  to  inves- 
tigate, the  fact  that  a  believer  obtains  a  knowledge  of  Christ. 
The  second  fact  is  almost  involved  in  the  first, — so  that  the 
slightest  reference  to  truths  already  made  out,  will  show  you 

THAT  THE  KNOWLEDGE  THUS  OBTAINED  IS  SUCH  AS  TO 
GENERATE    CONFIDENCE. 

You  observe  that,  in  the  case  of  St.  Paul,  knowledge  was 
accompanied  by  a  most  thorough  persuasion,  that  Christ  was 
able  to  keep  safe  the  deposit  which  he  had  given  into  his 
guardianship.  We  infer,  therefore,  that  the  knowledge, 
since  it  produced  this  persuasion,  must  have  been  knowledge 
of  Christ  as  possessing  those  attributes  which  insured  the 
security  of  whatsoever  might  be  intrusted  to  his  custody. 


FAITH    GAINS    BY    EXPERIENCE.  483 

And  this  is  precisely  what  we  have  proved  to  hold  good  in 
regard  generally  to  believers.  The  knowledge  which  their 
experience  furnishes  of  Christ  is  knowledge  of  his  power,  of 
his  faithfulness,  of  his  love.  So  far  as  they  have  yet  made 
trial  of  Christ,  they  can  apply  to  themselves  the  words  of 
Joshua  to  Israel,  Not  one  thing  hath  failed  of  all  the  good 
things  which  the  Lord,  your  God  spake  concerning  you. 
And  certainly,  if  the  result  of  every  experiment  is  a  new 
witness  to  the  joint  ability  and  willingness  of  the  Mediator 
to  succor  and  preserve  his  people,  you  cannot  well  avoid  the 
conclusion,  that  knowledge  must  produce  confidence ;  in 
other  words,  that  the  more  a  believer  knows  of  Christ,  the 
more  persuaded  will  lie  be  of  his  worthiness  to  be  intrusted 
with  all  the  interests  of  man.  If  our  knowledge  of  Christ 
prove  to  us  that,  up  to  the  present  moment,  Christ  hath  done 
for  us  all  that  he  hath  promised,  it  is  clear  that  this  know- 
ledge must  be  a  ground-work  for  confidence,  that  what 
remains  unfulfilled  will  be  accomplished  with  an  equal 
fidelity.  Already  has  the  believer  committed  every  thing 
to  Christ.  Faith — saving  faith — whatever  other  definitions 
may  be  framed — is  best  described  as  that  act  of  the  soul  by 
which  the  whole  man  is  given  over  to  the  guardianship  of 
the  Mediator.  He  who  thus  resigns  himself  to  Jesus  avouches 
two  things  ;  first,  his  belief  that  he  needs  a  protector ;  se- 
condly, his  belief  that  Christ  is  just  that  protector  which  his 
necessities  require.  And  though  you  may  resolve  saving 
faith  into  more  numerous  elements,  you  will  find  that  these 
two  are  not  only  the  chief,  but  that  they  include  all  others 
out  of  which  it  is  constituted  ;  so  that  he  who  believes  in 
Christ,  gives  himself  up  to  the  keeping  of  Christ.  And  for- 
asmuch as  experience  proves  to  him,  that  heretofore  he  has 
been  safe  in  this  custody,  assuredly  the  acquired  knowledge 
must  go  to  the  working  in  him  a  persuasion  that  hereafter 
he  shall  be  kept  in  an  equal  security. 

We  thus  trace  the  connection  between  the  knowledge  of 
the  first,  and  the  persuasion  of  the  second  part  of  our  text. 
We  show  you,  that  a  believer  will  gather  from  his  own  ex- 
perience of  Christ  the  material  of  confidence  in  Christ's  abi- 


484  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH 

lity  to  preserve  all  that  is  committed  to  his  keeping.  Expe- 
rience being  his  evidence  that  Christ  hath  never  yet  failed 
him,  is  also  his  earnest  that  the  future  comes  charged  with 
nothing  but  the  accomplishment  of  promise.  And  therefore 
is  he  confident.  Oh,  if  I  deceive  not  myself, — if  I  have  ac- 
tually been  enabled,  through  the  aid  of  God's  Spirit,  to  fas- 
ten my  faith  upon  Him  who  died  for  me,  and  rose,  and  lives 
to  intercede, — why  should  I  not  stay  myself  on  this  persua- 
sion of  St.  Paul,  that  Christ  is  able  to  keep  that  which  I 
have  committed  unto  him  against  that  day  ?  Soul  and 
body — the  believer  commits  both  to  the  Mediator.  The 
soul— she  must  be  detached  from  the  tabernacle  of  flesh,  and 
go  forth  alone  on  an  unexplored  pathway.  Who  shall  tell 
us  the  awfulness  of  being  suddenly  launched  into  infinity? 
Who  shall  conceive  the  prodigies  of  that  moment,  when, 
shaking  itself  free  from  the  trammels  of  the  body,  the  spirit 
struggles  forth,  solitary  and  naked,  and  must  make  its  way 
across  unknown  tracts  into  the  burning  presence  of  an  un- 
seen God  ?  Terrible  dissolution  !  Who  ever  saw  a  fellow- 
man  die  without  being  almost  staggered  at  the  thought  of 
that  mighty  journey  upon  which  the  unclothed  soul  had 
just  been  compelled  to  enter?  But  shall  the  believer  in 
Christ  Jesus  be  appalled  ?  Does  he  not  know  Christ  as  ha- 
ving ransomed  the  souls  of  his  people,  washed  them  in  his 
blood,  and  covered  them  with  his  righteousness  ?  Has  he 
not  found  a  witness  in  himself,  that  precious  is  his  soul  in 
the  sight  of  the  Redeemer  ?  What  then  ?  Shall  he  be  other- 
wise than  persuaded  that  Christ  will  watch  over  the  soul  at 
the  instant  of  separation  from  the  body  ;  and  putting  forth 
that  authority  which  has  been  given  him  in  heaven  and 
earth,  send  a  legion  of  bright  angels  to  convey  the  spirit, 
and  lead  it  to  himself?  Then  safely  lodged  in  Paradise,  the 
soul  shall  await  reunion  with  the  body,  unspeakably,  though 
not  yet  completely  blessed.  To  all  this  is  Christ  Jesus  pledged ; 
and  knowing  from  his  own  experience  that  Jesus  makes  no 
pledge  which  he  does  not  redeem,  the  believer  commits  his 
soul  to  Christ,  persuaded  that  he  is  able  to  keep  that  which 
he  hath  committed  unto  him  against  that  day.     The  body 


FAITH    CAINS    BY    EXPERIENCE.  485 

— it  must  be  spoiled  of  life,  and  bound  up  for  burial,  and 
left  to  corruption.  It  is  a  mysterious  destiny,  that  of  this 
frame-work  of  matter.  Its  atoms  may  be  scattered  to  the 
four  winds  of  heaven.  They  may  go  down  to  the  caverns 
of  the  great  deep, — they  may  enter  into  the  construction  of 
other  bodies.  And  certainly,  unless  there  be  brought  to 
the  agency  a  power  every  way  infinite,  it  might  well  be 
regarded  as  an  absurd  expectation  that  the  dissevered  par- 
ticles should  again  come  together,  and  that  the  identical 
body,  with  all  its  organs  and  all  its  limbs,  which  is  broken 
up  piecemeal  by  the  blow  of  death,  should  be  re-formed  and 
re-moulded,  the  same  in  every  thing,  except  in  the  being  in- 
corruptible and  imperishable.  But  the  believer  knows  that 
there  is  a  distinct  and  solemn  promise  of  Christ  which  has  re- 
spect to  the  bodies  of  his  people.  I  will  raise  him  up  at  the 
last  day,  is  the  repeated  assurance  in  regard  to  the  man  who 
believes  upon  his  name, — so  that  the  Redeemer  is  as  deeply 
pledged  to  be  the  guardian  of  a  believer's  dust,  as  of  a  believer's 
soul.  He  ransomed  matter  as  well  as  spirit ;  and  descending 
himself  into  the  sepulchre,  scattered  the  seeds  of  a  new  sub- 
sistence, which,  germinating  on  the  morning  of  the  judgment, 
shall  cover  the  globe  with  the  vast  harvest  of  its  buried  popu- 
lation. And,  therefore,  the  believer  can  be  confident.  Over- 
whelming in  its  greatness  as  the  achievement  is,  it  surpasses 
not  the  energies  of  the  Agent  unto  whom  it  is  ascribed. 
Christ  raised  himself— an  unspeakably  mightier  exploit  than 
the  raising  me.  Can  I  not  then  take  share  in  the  persuasion 
of  St.  Paul  ?  Let  darkness  be  woven  for  my  shroud,  and  the 
grave  be  hollowed  for  my  bed,  and  the  worm  be  given  for 
my  companion— with  thee,  O  Christ,  I  intrust  this  body.  / 
know  whom  I  have  believed.  The  winds  may  disperse,  the 
waters  may  ingulf,  and  the  fires  may  rarify  the  atoms 
which  made  up  this  frame  ;  but  I  know  that  my  Redeemer 
liveth,  and  though  after  my  skin  worms  destroy  this  body, 
yet  in  my  flesh  shall  I  see  God.  Thus,  body  as  well  as  soul, 
the  believer  commits  himself  wholly  to  Christ,— and  expe- 
rience witnessing  to  Christ's  power  and  Christ's  faithfulness, 
he  can  exclaim  with  the  apostle,  lam  persuaded  that  he  is 


486  ON    THE    STRENGTH    WHICH    FAITH    GAINS,    &c. 

able  to  keep  that  which  I  have  committed  unto  him  against 
that  day.  That  day — we  need  not  tell  the  believer  what 
day.  His  thoughts  and  his  hopes  are  on  the  second  advent 
of  his  Lord ;  and  though  no  day  has  been  specified,  yet 
speak  of  that  day,  and  the  allusion  is  distinctly  understood  ; 
the  mind  springs  forward  to  meet  the  descending  pomp  of 
the  Judge;  and  that  august  period  is  anticipated,  when, 
vindicating  before  the  universe  the  fidelity  of  his  guardian- 
ship, Christ  shall  consign  his  followers  to  glory  and  blessed- 
ness ;  and,  apportioning  noble  allotments  to  both  body  and 
soul,  prove  that  nothing  has  been  lost  of  that  unmeasured 
deposit,  which,  from  Adam  downwards  to  the  last  elect,  has 
accumulated  in  his  keeping. 

Oh,  that  we  all  had  the  persuasion  of  St.  Paul !  rather— 
oh,  that  we  all,  like  the  apostle,  would  resign  ourselves  to 
Christ.  Able  to  save  to  the  uttermost,  Lord,  to  whom  shall 
we  go  ;  thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life.  Thou  who  hast 
abolished  death,  upon  whom  else  shall  we  suspend  our  im- 
mortality ?  Thou  who  hast  spoiled  principalities  and  powers, 
whom  else  shall  we  take  as  our  champion  ?  whom  else  con- 
fide in  as  our  protector?  May  God,  by  his  Spirit,  lead  you 
all  to  the  one  Mediator  between  God  and  men, — the  man 
Christ  Jesus :  and  may  we  all  be  enabled  so  completely  to 
resign  ourselves  into  the  hands  of  Christ,  that  we  may  look 
forward  without  dread  to  the  hour  of  our  departure  ;  assured 
that  those  black  and  cold  waters  which  roll  in  upon  the 
dying  shall  sweep  nothing  away  out  of  the  watchfulness  of 
our  guardian ;  but  just  bearing  us  within  the  sphere  of 
his  peculiar  inspections,  give  us  up  to  his  care  as  children 
of  the  resurrection, — as  heirs  of  that  inheritance  which  is 
incorruptible  and  undefiled. 


SERMONS 


PREACHED 


IN    GREAT    ST.   MARY'S    CHURCH,    CAMBRIDGE 


Evening  Lecture  in  February,  1836  and  1837. 


1  8  3  6 


SERMON. 


THE    GREATNESS    OF    SALVATION    AN    ARGUMENT    FOR 
THE  PERIL  OF  ITS  NEGLECT. 


"  How  shall  we  escape,  if  we  neglect  so  great  salvation  1" — Hebrews,  2  :  3. 

There  is  nothing  affirmed  in  these  words,  but  the  great- 
ness of  the  salvation  proposed  by  the  Gospel  ;  and  from  this 
greatness  seems  inferred  the  impossibility  of  escape,  if  we 
neglect  the  salvation.    And  there  is,  we  think,  surprising 
force  in  the  question  of  our  text,  when  nothing  but  the  stu- 
pendousness  of  salvation  is  regarded  as  our  proof,  that  to 
neglect  it  is  to  perish.    It  is  a  minister's  duty,  whether  ad- 
dressing his  own  congregation,  or  those  to  whom  he  is  com- 
paratively a  stranger,  to  strive  by  every  possible  motive  to 
stir  his  hearers  to  the  laying  hold  on  salvation,  that  so, 
whatever  their  final  portion,  he  may  be  free  from  their  blood. 
And  therefore  are  we  desirous  to  press  you  this  night  for  an 
answer  to  the  question,  "  How  shall  we  escape,  if  we  ne- 
glect so  great  salvation  ?"    We  wish  you  honestly  to  exam- 
ine, whether  the  magnitude  of  redemption  be  not  of  itself  an 
overcoming  demonstration  that  ruin  must  follow  its  neglect. 
We  would  keep  you  close  to  this  point.    The  power  of  the 
question  lies  in  this — the  peril  of  the  neglect  proved  by  the 
greatness  of  the  salvation. 

62 


490  THE    GREATNESS    OF    SALVATION    AN 

And  we  are  sure  that  there  are  many  striking  considera- 
tions, flowing  from  the  fact  that  the  salvation  is  so  great, 
which  must  force  you  to  admit  the  impossibility  of  escape 
asserted  by  St.  Paul.  We  shall  necessarily,  as  we  proceed, 
descend  so  far  into  particulars,  as  to  take  by  themselves  cer- 
tain elements  of  the  greatness  in  question.  But,  whatever 
the  constituent  parts  into  Avhich  we  may  resolve  salvation, 
it  must  be  simply  as  great  that  we  exhibit  this  salvation  ; 
and  from  the  greatness,  and  from  this  alone,  must  we  prove 
that  none  can  escape  who  neglect  the  salvation.  You  see 
clearly  that  the  peculiarity  of  the  passage  lies  in  this,  that  it 
infers  the  peril  of  the  neglect  from  the  greatness  of  the  sal- 
vation. And  in  laboring  at  illustrating  the  accuracy  of  this 
inference,  and  the  pressing  on  you  your  consequent  danger 
if  careless  of  the  soul,  we  shall  attempt  no  other  arrange- 
ment of  our  discourse,  but  that  which  will  set  before  you  in 
succession,  certain  respects  in  which  salvation  is  great,  and 
use  each  successive  exhibition  as  a  proof,  that  to  despise 
what  is  thus  great,  must  be  to  make  sure  destruction. 

Now  if  we  were  arguing  with  an  atheist,  the  man  who 
disbelieves  the  existence  of  a  God  ;  and  if  we  desired  to  con- 
vince him  on  this,  the  fundamental  article  of  all  religion, 
we  should  probably  endeavor  to  reason  up  from  the  creation 
to  the  Creator,  using  the  traces  of  an  intelligent  cause,  by 
which  we  seem  surrounded,  in  proof  that  a  mightier  archi- 
tect than  chance  constructed  our  dwelling.  But  we  are  quite 
aware  that  our  adversary  might  demand  a  demonstration, 
that  nothing  short  of  an  infinite  power  could  have  builded 
and  furnished  this  planet ;  and  we  are  not  perhaps  well  able 
to  define  at  what  point  the  finite  must  cease,  and  the  infinite 
commence.  It  may  be  conceded  that  certain  results  lie  be- 
yond human  agency,  and  yet  disputed  whether  they  need 
such  an  agency  as  we  strictly  call  divine.  "What  men  could 
not  produce,  might  possibly  be  produced  by  beings  mightier 
than  men,  and  yet  those  beings  stop  far  short  of  Omnipo- 
tence. 

We  do  not,  therefore,  think  of  maintaining,  that  the  evi- 
dences of  wisdom  and  power,  graven  on  this  creation,  are 


ARGUMENT    FOR    THE    PERIL    OF    ITS    NEGLECT.  491 

the  strongest  which  can  be  even  conceived.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  will  not  pretend  to  deny  that  we  can  imagine 
them  greatly  multiplied  and  strengthened.  It  is  manifest, 
that  the  keener  our  faculties,  and  the  more  earnest  our  in- 
vestigation, the  clearer  do  these  evidences  appear;  for  there 
is  no  comparison  between  those  apprehensions  of  the  works 
of  creation  which  the  man  of  science  has,  and  those  within 
reach  of  the  illiterate  observer.  And,  therefore,  it  is  quite 
conceivable  that  there  might  be  either  such  a  communica- 
tion of  more  powerful  faculties,  or  such  a  laying  bare  of  the 
hidden  wonders  of  nature,  that  our  present  amount  of  ac- 
quaintance with  creation  should  be  as  nothing  when  com- 
pared with  what  might  then  be  attained.  What  surprises  a 
man,  what  appears  wonderful  to  him,  because  beyond  his 
skill  to  effect,  or  his  wisdom  to  explain,  does  not  necessarily 
present  matter  of  surprise  to  an  angel :  the  standard  of  won- 
derfulness  grows  with  the  faculties  of  the  creature  ;  there 
being  nothing  to  overawe  and  astonish,  till  there  is  some- 
thing far  surpassing  its  power  or  its  intelligence. 

Hence,  we  should  not  perhaps  feel  warranted  in  saying 
to  the  atheist,  how  can  you  believe,  if  you  resist  so  great 
tokens  of  a  Deity  as  are  stamped  on  the  scenery  by  which 
you  are  encompassed  1  If  we  can  suppose  yet  greater  tokens, 
it  is  possible  that  he  who  will  not  yield  to  the  evidence  now 
vouchsafed,  would  yield  to  that  mightier  which  imagination 
can  array.  The  atheist  might  say  to  us,  I  am  not  convinced 
by  what  I  view  around  me.  My  own  thoughts  can  suggest 
stronger  witness  for  a  Deity,  if  a  Deity  there  be,  than  you 
think  impressed  on  this  earth,  and  its  furniture,  and  its  in- 
habitants. And  whilst  my  mind  can  arrange  a  greater  proof, 
you  can  have  no  right  to  denounce  my  unbelief  as  insur- 
mountable, because  not  surmounted  by  what  you  reckon 
so  great. 

Now  we  stay  not  to  show  you,  that  he  who  can  resist  the 
evidences  of  an  Infinite  First  cause,  which  are  accessible  to 
dwellers  on  this  planet,  would  probably  remain  unconvinced 
if  the  universe,  in  all  its  spreadings,  were  open  to  his  expa- 
tiations.    He  would  carry  with  him  that  desire  to  disbelieve, 


492  THE    GREATNESS    OF    SALVATION    AN" 

which  is  the  mainspring  of  infidelity ;  and  this  would  al- 
ways furnish  an  excuse  for  remaining-  the  atheist.  But  if 
we  cannot  say  to  the  atheist,  when  pointing-  to  the  surround- 
ing creation,  you  withstand  an  evidence  than  which  there 
cannot  be  a  greater,  we  can  say  to  the  worldly-minded,  when 
pointing  to  the  scheme  of  redemption,  you  neglect  a  salva- 
tion than  which  there  cannot  even  be  imagined  a  mightier. 
If  the  atheist  might  appeal  from  proofs  which  have  been 
given,  to  yet  stronger  which  might  have  been  furnished,  we 
deny  that  the  worldly-minded  can  appeal  from  what  God 
hath  done  on  their  behalf,  to  a  more  marvellous  interference 
which  imagination  can  picture.  It  is  the  property  of  re- 
demption, if  not  of  creation,  that  it  leaves  no  room  for  ima- 
gination. We  will  not  defy  a  man  to  array  in  his  mind  the 
imagery  of  an  universe,  presenting  the  impress  of  Godhead 
more  clearly  than  that  in  which  we  are  placed.  As  we  have 
already  said,  even  if  the  universe  remained  the  same,  we 
can  suppose  such  change  in  our  faculties  of  observation  as 
would  clothe  every  star,  and  every  atom,  and  every  insect, 
with  a  hundred-fold  more  of  the  proof  that  there  is  a  God. 
But  we  will  defy  a  man  to  conceive  a  scheme  for  the  rescue 
of  a  lost  world,  which  should  exceed,  in  any  single  respect, 
that  laid  open  by  the  Gospel.  We  affirm  of  this  scheme, 
that  it  is  so  great  that  yon  cannot  suppose  a  greater.  It  is 
not  because  our  faculties  are  bounded,  that  it  seems  to  us 
wonderful.  We  have  right  to  consider  that  it  wears  the 
same  aspect  to  the  highest  of  creatures:  the  mystery  of  god- 
liness being  unsearchable  as  well  to  angels  as  to  men.  And 
if  it  be  supposable  that  there  are  scenes,  which  other  beings 
are  permitted  to  traverse,  far  outdoing  in  the  wonderfulness 
of  structure,  and  the  majesty  of  adornment,  the  earth  on 
which  we  dwell — so  that  this  creation  is  not  the  richest  in 
the  tracery  of  power  and  skill — we  pronounce  it  insuppos- 
able,  that  there  could  have  been  made  an  arrangement  on 
behalf  of  fallen  creatures,  fuller  of  Divinity,  and  more  worthy 
amazement,  than  that  of  which  we  are  actually  the  objects. 
This  is  our  first  way  of  putting,  or  rather  vindicating,  the 
question  of  our  text.    We  contend  that  atheism  has  a  far 


ARGUMENT    FOR    THE    PERIL    OF    ITS    NEGLECT.  493 

better  apology  for  resisting  the  evidences  of  a  God  which 
are  spread  over  creation,  than  world! y-mindedness  for  mani- 
festing insensibility  to  redemption  through  Christ.  Atheism 
may  ask  for  a  wider  sphere  of  expatiation,  and  a  more  glow- 
ing impress  of  Deity  ;  for  it  falls  within  our  power  to  con- 
ceive of  richer  manifestations  of  the  invisible  Godhead.  But 
worldly-mindedness  cannot  ask  for  more  touching  proof  of 
the  love  of  the  Almighty,  or  for  a  more  bounteous  provision 
for  human  necessities,  or  for  more  stirring  motive  to  repent- 
ance and  obedience.  Those  of  you  who  are  not  overcome 
by  what  has  been  done  for  them,  and  who  treat  with  indif- 
ference and  contempt  the  proffers  of  the  Gospel,  are  just  in 
the  position  of  the  atheist  who,  should  remain  the  atheist 
after  God  had  set  before  him  the  highest  possible  demonstra- 
tion of  himself.  It  is  not  too  bold  a  thing  to  say,  that,  in  re- 
deeming us,  God  exhausted  himself.  He  gave  himself;  and 
what  greater  gift  could  remain  unbestowed  ?  So  then,  if 
you  neglect  salvation,  there  is  nothing  which  you  would  not 
neglect.  God  himself  could  provide  nothing  greater ;  and 
if  therefore  you  are  unaffected  by  this,  you  only  prove  your- 
selves incapable  of  being  moved. 

Thus  it  is  the  greatness  of  salvation  which  proves  the  ut- 
ter ruin  which  must  follow  its  neglect.  If  God  have  done 
for  you  the  utmost  which  even  Deity  could  do  ;  if  all  the  di- 
vine attributes,  unlimited  as  they  are,  have  combined,  yea, 
even  exhausted  themselves  in  the  scheme  of  your  rescue  ;  if 
the  Creator  could  not  by  any  imaginable  display  have  shown 
himself  more  compassionate  or  more  terrible,  mightier  to 
save  or  mightier  to  crush  ;  and  if  you  withstand  all  this,  if 
you  are  indifferent  to  all  this,  if  you  "  neglect  so  great  sal- 
vation ;"  may  we  not  affirm  that  the  magnitude  of  that  which 
you  despise  is  an  incontrovertible  proof  that  you  must  in- 
evitably perish  ?  May  we  not  argue,  that,  having  shown 
yourselves  too  hardened  to  yield  to  that  into  which  Deity 
hath  thrown  all  his  strength,  and  too  proud  to  be  humbled 
by  that  which  involved  the  humiliation  of  God,  and  too 
grovelling  to  be  attracted  by  that  which  unites  the  human  to 
the  divine,  and  too  cold  to  be  warmed  by  that  which  burns 


494  THE    GREATNESS    OF    SALVATION    AN 

with  the  compassions  of  Him  who  is  love — may  we  not 
argue  that  you  thus  prove  of  yourselves,  that  there  is  no 
possible  arrangement  by  which  you  could  be  saved  ;  that,  re- 
sisting what  in  itself  is  greatest,  you  demonstrate,  in  a  cer- 
tain sense,  that  you  cannot  be  overcome  ;  and  oh  !  then,  if 
we  have  nothing  to  argue  from  but  the  stupendousness  of 
redemption,  what  energy  is  there  in  the  question,  "  How 
shall  we  escape,  if  we  neglect  so  great  salvation  ?" 

But  it  is  necessary,  as  we  before  observed,  that  we  consi- 
der more  in  detail  the  greatness  of  salvation,  and,  by  re- 
solving it  into  its  elements,  make  clearer  the  proof  of  the  peril 
of  neglect.  Let  it  then  first  be  remarked,  that  salvation  is 
great  because  of  the  agency  through  which  it  was  effected. 
You  know  that  the  Author  of  our  redemption  was  none 
other  than  the  eternal  Son  of  God,  who  had  covenanted 
from  the  first  to  become  the  surety  of  the  fallen.  It  came 
not  within  the  power  of  an  angel  to  make  atonement  for 
our  sins :  the  angelic  nature  might  have  been  united  to  the 
human,  but  there  would  not  have  been  dignity  in  the  one 
to  give  the  required  worth  to  the  sufferings  of  the  other.  So 
far  as  we  have  the  power  of  ascertaining,  it  would  seem  that 
no  being  but  the  Divine,  taking  to  himself  flesh,  could  have 
satisfied  justice  in  the  stead  of  fallen  men.  But  then  this  is 
precisely  the  arrangement  which  has  been  made  on  our  be- 
half. It  was  the  second  person  in  the  ever-blessed  Trinity, 
who,  compassionating  the  ruin  which  transgression  had 
brought  on  this  earth,  assumed  our  nature,  exhausted  our 
curse,  and  died  our  death.  And  certainly,  if  there  be  an 
aspect  under  which  redemption  appears  great,  it  is  when 
surveyed  as  the  achievement  of  the  only  begotten  of  the 
Father.  The  majesty  of  the  agent  gives  stupendousness  to 
the  work,  and  causes  it  to  dilate  till  it  far  exceeds  compre- 
hension. It  is  mainly  on  this  account  that  we  can  declare 
even  imagination  unable  to  increase  the  greatness  of  the  ar- 
rangement for  our  rescue.  This  arrangement  demanded 
that  God  himself  should  become  man,  and  sustain  all  the 
wrath  which  sin  had  provoked  ;  and  what  can  be  imagined 
more  amazing  than  the  fact,  that  what  the  arrangement  de- 


ARGUMENT    FOR    THE    PERIL    OF    ITS    NEGLECT.  495 

liuuided  literally  took  place  ?  The  problem,  how  God  could 
be  just  and  yet  the  justifier  of  sinners,  baffled  all  finite  intelli- 
gence, because  a  divine  person  alone  could  mediate  between 
God  and  man  ;  aud  if  created  wisdom  could  have  discovered 
the  necessity,  it  would  never  have  surmised  the  possibility. 
Now  certainly  that  which,  more  than  any  thing  else,  ren- 
dered human  redemption  insupposable,  when  submitted  to 
the  understanding  of  the  very  highest  of  creatures,  must  be 
confessed  to  be  also  that  which  gives  a  sublime  awfulness  to 
the  plan,  and  invests  it  with  a  grandeur  which  increases  as 
Ave  gaze.  In  looking  at  the  cross,  and  considering  that  our 
sins  are  laid  upon  the  being  who  hangs  there  in  weakness 
and  ignominy,  the  overcoming  thought  is,  that  this  being  is 
none  other  than  the  everlasting  God  ;  and  that,  however  he 
seems  mastered  by  the  powers  of  wickedness,  he  could  by  a 
single  word,  uttered  from  the  tree  on  which  he  immolates 
himself,  scatter  the  universe  into  nothing,  and  call  up  an 
assemblage  of  new  worlds,  and  new  systems.  This  makes 
salvation  great — I  shall  know  how  great,  when  I  can  mea- 
sure the  distance  between  the  eternal  and  the  perishable, 
omnipotence  and  feebleness,  immortality  and  death.  But  if 
salvation  is  great,  because  the  Savior  is  Divine,  assuredly 
the  greatness  of  salvation  proves  the  peril  of  neglect.  To 
neglect  the  salvation  must  be  to  throw  scorn  on  the  Savior ; 
and  that  Savior  being-  so  great,  "  how  shall  we  escape  ?" 
Oh,  if  it  give  an  unmeasured  vastness  to  the  work  of  our 
redemption,  that  he  who  undertook,  and  carried  on,  and 
completed  that  work,  was  "  the  brightness  of  the  Father's 
glory,  and  the  express  image  of  his  person ;"  if  the  fact, 
that  he  "  who  bare  our  sins  in  his  own  body  on  the  tree," 
was  that  illustrious  being  "for  whom  are  all  things,  and 
by  whom  are  all  things,"  magnify  our  rescue  from  death  till 
thought  itself  fails  to  overtake  its  boundaries  ;  then  there  is 
a  greatness  in  the  proffered  deliverance,  derived  from  the 
greatness  of  the  deliverer,  which  proclaims  us  ruined  if  we 
treat  the  offer  with  contempt.  We  are  taught,  by  the  great- 
ness, that  there  can  be  salvation  in  none  other,  for  God 
would  not  have  interposed,  could  any  other  have  delivered. 


496  THE    GREATNESS    OF    SALVATION    AN 

We  are  taught  that  to  neglect,  is  to  set  at  nought  Him  who 
can  crush  by  a  breath,  and  to  convert  into  an  enemy,  pledged 
to  our  destruction,  the  alone  being  that  could  be  found 
throughout  a  peopled  immensity  powerful  enough  for  our 
rescue.  And  what  say  you,  men  and  brethren — if  the  great- 
ness of  the  salvation  depend  on  the  greatness  of  the  Savior, 
and  this  greatness  demonstrate  that  to  neglect  the  salvation, 
is  to  throw  away  our  only  hope,  and  to  array  against  our- 
selves that  fiercest  of  all  vengeance,  Divine  mercy  scorned — 
what  say  you,  in  contradiction  of  the  impossibility  asserted 
by  the  question,  "  How  shall  we  escape,  if  we  neglect  so 
great  salvation  ?" 

But  again— we  may  affirm  this  salvation  to  be  great,  be- 
cause of  the  completeness  and  fullness  of  the  work,  great  in 
itself,  as  well  as  in  its  Author.  We  might  be  sure  that  what 
a  divine  agent  undertook  would  be  thoroughly  effected  ;  and 
ciccordingly,  the  more  we  examine  the  scheme  of  our  redemp- 
tion, the  more  may  we  prove  it  in  every  sense  perfect.  The 
sins  of  the  whole  race  were  laid  upon  Christ ;  and  the  divinity 
gave  such  worth  to  the  sufferings  of  the  humanity,  that  the 
whole  race  might  be  pardoned,  if  the  whole  race  would  put 
faith  in  the  substitute.  There  is  consequently  nothing  in 
our  own  guiltiness  to  make  us  hesitate  as  to  the  possibility 
of  forgiveness.  The  penalties  due  to  a  violated  law  have 
been  discharged  ;  and  therefore,  if  we  believe  in  our  surety, 
we  are  as  free  as  though  we  had  never  transgressed.  And 
is  not  that  a  great  salvation,  which  places  pardon  within 
reach  of  the  vilest  offenders  ;  and  which,  providing  an  atone- 
ment commensurate  with  every  amount  of  iniquity,  forbids 
any  to  despair  who  have  a  wish  to  be  saved  1 

But  yet  further — this  salvation  not  only  provides  for  our 
pardon,  so  that  punishment  may  be  avoided  ;  it  provides  also 
for  our  acceptance,  so  that  happiness  may  be  obtained.  The 
faith  which  so  interests  us  in  Christ,  that  we  are  reckoned 
to  have  satisfied  the  law's  penalties  in  him,  obtains  for  us 
also  the  imputation  of  his  righteousness,  so  that  we  have  a 
spotless  covering  in  which  to  appear  before  God.  Hence  we 
have  share  in  the  obedience,  as  well  as  in  the  suffering  of 


ARGUMENT    FOR    THE    PERIL    OF    ITS    NEGLECT.  497 

the  Mediator  ;  and  whilst  the  latter  delivers  from  the  death 
we  had  deserved,  the  former  consigns  to  the  immortality  we 
could  never  have  merited.  And  is  not  this  a  great  salvation, 
great  in  its  simplicity,  great  in  its  comprehensiveness,  which 
thus  meets  the  every  necessity  of  the  guilty  and  helpless ; 
and  which,  arranged  for  creatures  whom  it  finds  in  the 
lowest  degradation,  leaves  them  not  till  elevated  to  the  very 
summit  of  dignity  ? 

But  if  salvation  be  thus  great  in  the  fullness  of  its  provi- 
sions, what  again  does  the  greatness  prove  but  the  peril  of 
neglect?  If  the  salvation  were  in  any  respect  deficient, 
there  might  be  excuse  for  the  refusing  it  our  attention.  If  it 
met  our  necessities  only  in  part,  leaving  much  to  be  sought 
in  other  quarters,  and  supplied  from  other  sources,  it  would 
necessarily  lose  much  of  its  greatness  ;  and  as  its  greatness 
diminished,  so  perhaps  would  its  claim  on  our  eager  accep- 
tance. If,  providing  pardon  for  past  offences,  it  left  us  to  stand 
or  fall  for  the  future  by  our  own  obedience,  making  final  se- 
curity the  result  of  nothing  but  our  diligence,  neglect  might 
be  palliated  by  the  confessed  fact,  that  what  it  offered  sufficed 
not  for  our  wants.  To  pardon  me,  and  then  leave  me  to  gain 
heaven  by  my  own  works,  were  to  make  death  as  sure  as  ever, 
but  only  more  terrible,  because  I  had  been  mocked  with  the 
prospect  of  life.  And  I  might  have  an  apology  for  not  giv- 
ing heed  to  the  Gospel  and  not  striving  to  comply  with  its 
demands,  if  I  could  plead  that  this  Gospel  proffered  only  the 
half  of  what  I  need,  and  that  I  could  no  more  furnish  the 
remainder  than  provide  the  whole.  But  the  salvation  is 
great,  so  great  that  I  cannot  find  the  moral  want  of  which 
it  does  not  present  the  supply.  It  is  so  great,  that  1  can  only 
describe  it  by  saying,  that  divine  knowledge  took  the  mea- 
sure of  every  human  necessity,  and  divine  love  and  power 
gathered  into  this  salvation  a  more  than  adequate  provision. 
What  then  if  we  neglect  this  salvation  ?  The  salvation  is 
great,  as  furnishing  all  which  we  require :  what  then  is  to 
neglect  it,  but  to  put  from  us  all  which  we  require  ?  The 
salvation  is  great,  because  meeting  with  a  wonderful  pre- 
cision our  every  exigence :  what  then  is  to  neglect  it,  but 
63 


4(J8  THE    GREATNESS    OF    SALVATION    AN 

to  leave  our  every  exigence  unsatisfied  and  uncared  for  1 
The  salvation  is  great,  because  proffering  the  pardon  of  sin, 
and  a  righteousness  which  will  endure  the  scrutinies  of  the 
Omniscient,  and  victory  over  death,  and  acquittal,  yea  re- 
ward, at  the  judgment:  what  then  is  it  to  neglect  it,  but  to 
keep  the  burden  of  unexpiated  guilt,  and  to  resolve  to  go 
hence  with  no  plea  against  wrath,  and  to  leave  the  sting  in 
death,  and  to  insure  dreariness  and  agony  through  eternity? 
Oh,  it  is  the  completeness  of  salvation  which  gives  it  its 
greatness.  Salvation  is  collossal,  towering  till  lost  in  the  in- 
accessible majesty  of  its  Author,  because  containing  what- 
ever is  required  for  the  transformation  of  man  from  the 
child  of  wrath  to  the  child  of  God,  from  death  to  life,  from 
the  shattered,  and  corruptible,  and  condemned,  to  the  glorious, 
and  imperishable,  and  approved.  But  if  all  this  give  great- 
ness to  salvation,  beyond  donbt  it  is  the  greatness  which 
proves,  that,  in  treating  the  Gospel  with  indifference,  we 
block  up  against  ourselves  the  alone  path  by  which  sinners 
can  flee  divine  wrath.  As  the  scheme  of  redemption  rises 
before  us  in  its  grandeur  and  plenitude — a  grandeur  which 
makes  it  more  than  commensurate  with  the  ruin  which 
apostasy  hath  fastened  on  mankind,  and  a  plenitude  through 
which  it  meets  the  every  want  of  every  one  who  longs  to 
grasp  eternal  life — why,  the  more  magnificent,  and  the  more 
comprehensive,  appears  the  proffered  deliverance,  with  the 
more  energy  does  it  echo  back  the  question  of  the  apostle, 
(:  How  shall  we  escape,  if  we  neglect  so  great  salvation  ?" 

But  there  are  yet  other  ways  in  which  we  may  uphold 
the  justice  of  the  argument,  which  infers  the  peril  of  neglect 
from  the  greatness  of  salvation.  We  proceed  to  observe  that 
salvation  is  great,  not  more  because  of  the  greatness  of  the 
Agent  by  whom  it  was  achieved,  than  of  Him  by  whom  it 
is  applied.  The  personal  presence  of  the  Redeemer  with 
his  church  was  undoubtedly  a  privilege  and  blessing  sur- 
passing our  power  to  estimate.  Yet,  forasmuch  as  the  de- 
scent of  the  Spirit  could  not  take  place  without  his  own  de- 
parture from  earth,  Christ  assured  his  disciples  that  it  was 
expedient  for  them  that  he  should  go  away ;  thus  implying 


ARGUMENT    FOR    THE    PERIL    OF    ITS    NEGLECT.  409 

it  to  be  more  for  their  benefit  that  the  Holy  Ghost  should 
come  down,  than  that  himself  should  remain.  And  if,  there- 
fore, it.  give  greatness  to  salvation  that  it  was  effected  by  the 
Son,  it  must  give  as  much  that  it  is  applied  by  the  Spirit. 
That  a  person  of  the  ever-blessed  Trinity — that  energizing 
Agent  who  is  described  as  brooding  over  the  waters,  when 
creation  had  not  yet  been  moulded  into  symmetry,  that  He 
might  extract  order  from  confusion — that  this  being  should 
continually  reside  upon  earth,  on  purpose  that  he  may  act 
on  the  consciences  and  hearts  of  mankind  through  the  Gos- 
pel of  Christ:  we  say  of  this,  that  it  gives  to  our  salvation 
the  perpetual  majesty  of  Divinity,  an  awfulness  scarce  infe- 
rior to  that  which  it  derives  from  the  sacrifice  of  the  Son. 
The  presence  of  the  Spirit  with  the  church,  a  presence  so 
actual  and  universal  that  the  heart  of  each  amongst  us  is  the 
scene  of  his  operations,  and  the  truth  of  our  redemption 
through  Christ  is  that  which  he  strives  to  bring  home  to  our 
affections, — this  assuredly  stamps  a  greatness  on  the  arrange- 
ments for  deliverance,  only  to  be  measured  when  we  can 
measure  God  himself. 

But  if  it  give  greatness  to  salvation,  that  it  is  applied  by 
the  Spirit,  who  can  fail  to  perceive  that  from  the  greatness 
may  be  learned  the  peril  of  neglect?  We  are  certain  of  every 
one  amongst  you  who  neglects  salvation,  that  he  withstands 
the  suggestions  and  strivings  of  the  Spirit  of  the  living  God. 
We  know  that  there  is  not  one  of  you,  the  most  indifferent 
and  careless  in  regard  to  the  threatenings  and  promises  of 
the  Gospel,  who  has  not  had  to  fight  his  way  to  his  present 
insensibility  against  the  powerful  remonstrances  of  an  invi- 
sible monitor,  and  who  is  not  often  compelled,  in  order  to 
the  keeping  himself  from  alarm  and  anxiety,  to  crush,  with 
a  sudden  and  desperate  violence,  pleadings  which  are  fraught 
with  super-human  energy.  We  know  this.  We  want  no  lay- 
ing bare  of  your  secret  experience  in  order  to  our  ascertain- 
ing this.  We  need  no  confessions  to  inform  us  that  you  have 
some  little  trouble  in  destroying  yourselves.  The  young 
amongst  you,  whose  god  is  pleasure  and  whose  home  the 
world,  we  would  not  believe  them  if  they  assured  us,  that 


500  THE    GREATNESS    OF    SALVATION    AN 

they  never  know  any  kind  of  mental  uneasiness;  that  never 
when  in  the  crowd,  never  when  alone,  do  they  hear  the 
whisperings  of  a  voice  which  tells  them  of  moral  danger  5 
that  they  have  never  difficulty,  when  told  of  the  death  of  an 
associate,  or  when  they  meet  a  funeral,  or  when  laid  on  a 
sick-hed,  in  repressing  all  fear,  all  consciousness  of  a  neces- 
sity for  a  thorough  change  of  conduct.  We  would  not  believe 
them,  we  say,  if  they  assured  us  of  this.  We  know  better. 
We  know  them  the  possessors  of  a  conscience.  We  know 
them  acted  on  by  the  Spirit  of  the  Almighty.  We  know  them 
immortal,  sons  and  daughters  of  eternity,  however  they  may 
endeavor  to  live  as  though  death  were  annihilation.  And 
therefore  we  would  not  believe  them.  Oil,  110.  As  soon  be- 
lieve the  rock,  were  it  gifted  with  speech,  which  should 
argue,  that,  because  unsoftened,  it  was  never  shone  on  by 
the  sun,  and  never  swept  by  the  winds,  and  never  dashed 
by  the  waters,  as  the  granite  of  the  heart,  which,  because 
yet  insensible,  would  deny  that  an  unseen  hand  ever  smote 
it,  or  celestial  dews  ever  fell  on  it,  or  divine  beams  strove  to 
penetrate  it. 

No,  we  cannot  believe  you  when  you  would  tell  us  that 
you  are  let  alone  by  God.  Again  we  reply  that  we  know 
better.  We  know  that  the  young  man,  who  is  the  slave  of 
his  passions,  has  often  a  misgiving  that  his  tyrants  here  will 
be  his  tormentors  hereafter.  We  know  that  the  young 
woman,  whose  deity  is  her  dress,  is  sometimes  startled  by 
the  thought  of  the  shroud  and  the  winding-sheet.  We  know 
that  the  merchantman,  laboring  to  be  rich,  is  now  and  then 
aghast  with  the  fear  of  being  poor  through  eternity.  We 
know  that  the  shrewd  man,  too  cunning  to  be  duped  by  any 
but  himself,  has  moments  in  which  he  feels,  that,  in  the 
greatest  of  all  transactions,  he  may  perhaps  be  over-reached, 
and  barter  the  everlasting  for  the  perishable.  We  know  that 
the  proud  man,  moving  in  a  region  of  his  own,  and  flushed 
with  the  thought  how  many  are  beneath  him,  is  occasionally 
startled  by  a  vision  of  utter  degradation,  himself  in  infamy, 
and  "  How  art  thou  fallen  !"  breathed  against  him  by  the 
vilest.    We  know  that  those  who  neglect  means  of  grace, 


ARGUMENT    FOR    THE    PERIL    OF    ITS    NEGLECT.  f)0l 

who,  when  invited  to  the  Lord's  table,  continually  refuse — 
we  know,  that,  as  they  turn  their  back  on  the  ordinance, 
they  do  violence  to  a  secret  remonstrance,  and  feel,  if  only 
for  an  instant,  (oh,  how  easy,  by  the  resistance  of  an  instant, 
to  endanger  their  eternity!)  that  they  are  rejecting  a  privi- 
lege which  will  rise  against  them  as  an  accuser.  We  know 
all  this,  and  we  cannot  believe  you  when  you  would  tell  us 
that  you  are  let  alone  by  God.  You  are  not  let  alone.  You 
are  acted  on  through  the  machinery  of  conscience.  You 
may  have  done  your  best  towards  mastering  and  extermina- 
ting conscience,  but  you  have  not  yet  quite  succeeded. 
There  is  Divinity  in  the  monitor,  and  it  will  not  be  over- 
borne. We  know  that  you  are  not  let  alone :  for  the  salva- 
tion which  we  press  on  your  acceptance  is  a  great  salva- 
tion ;  and  in  nothing  is  this  greatness  more  apparent  than  in 
the  fact,  that  the  Spirit  of  the  Almighty  is  occupied  with 
commending  this  salvation  to  sinners,  and  combating  their 
prejudices,  and  urging  them  to  accept.  It  is  indeed  a  mar- 
vellous greatness,  that  Omnipotence  itself  should  not  be  more 
engaged  with  upholding  the  universe,  and  actuating  the 
motions  of  unnumbered  systems,  and  sustaining  the  anima- 
tion of  every  living  thing,  from  the  archangel  clown  to  the 
insect,  than  with  plying  transgressors  with  all  the  motives 
which  are  laid  up  in  the  Gospel,  admonishing  them  by  the 
agony,  and  the  passion,  and  the  death  of  a  Mediator,  and 
warning  them  by  the  terrors,  as  well  as  inviting  them  by  the 
mercies,  of  the  cross.  It  is  a  marvellous  greatness.  But  if 
you  remain  the  indifferent  and  unbelieving,  this  greatness 
only  proves  that  you  are  not  to  be  overcome  by  the  strongest 
power  which  can  be  brought  to  bear  on  our  nature  ;  proves 
that  an  agency,  than  which  none  is  mightier,  has  wrestled 
with  you,  and  striven  with  you,  but  as  yet  all  in  vain  ; 
proves  therefore  the  certainty  of  your  destruction,  if  you 
persist  in  your  carelessness,  because  it  proves,  that,  having 
withstood  the  most  potent  means,  there  can  be  none  to 
which  you  will  yield  :  and  what  is  this  but  proving  the  peril 
of  neglect  from  the  greatness  of  salvation  ?  what  is  this, 
since  the  greatness  of  salvation  depends  much  on  the  great- 


502  THE    GREATNESS    OF    SALVATION    AN 

ness  of  the  being  who  applies  it,  what  is  this  but  asking;. 
"  How  shall  we  escape,  if  we  neglect  so  great  salvation  ?" 

But  we  have  yet  another  mode  in  which  to  exhibit  the 
same  truth  ;  to  show,  that  is,  that  the  greatness  of  salvation 
proves  the  impossibility  that  they  who  neglect  it  should  es- 
cape. We  are  bound  to  regard  the  Gospel  of  Christ  Jesus  as 
the  grand  revelation  of  future  punishment  and  reward.  Until 
the  Redeemer  appeared,  and  brought  men  direct  tidings  from 
the  invisible  world,  the  sanctions  of  eternity  were  scarcely 
at  all  made  to  bear  on  the  occupations  of  time.  It  cannot  in- 
deed be  said  that  Christ  first  taught  the  immortality  of  the 
soul ;  for  from  the  beginning  the  soul  was  her  own  witness, 
though  oftentimes  the  testimony  was  inadequately  given, 
that  she  perished  not  with  the  body.  Yet  so  imperfect  had 
been  the  foregoing  knowledge,  as  compared  with  that  com- 
municated by  Christ,  that  St.  Paul  declares  of  the  Savior, 
that  he  "abolished  death,  and  brought  life  and  immortality 
to  light  by  the  Gospel."  In  the  teachings  of  the  Mediator  we 
have  such  clear  information  as  to  our  living  under  a  retribu- 
tive government,  that  ignorance  can  be  no  man's  excuse,  if 
he  act  as  though  God  took  no  note  of  his  conduct.  And  we 
reckon  that  much  of  the  greatness  of  the  Gospel  consists  in 
the  greatness  of  the  reward  which  it  proposes  to  righteous- 
ness, and  the  greatness  of  the  punishment  which  it  denounces 
on  impenitence.  It  is  a  great  salvation,  if  on  the  alternative 
of  its  rejection,  or  acceptance,  hinges  another  alternative,  that 
of  everlasting  misery  or  everlasting  happiness.  The  charac- 
teristic of  great  may  most  justly  be  ascribed  to  a  system, 
whose  sanctions  are  of  so  sublime  and  awful  a  description, 
which  animates  to  self-denial  by  the  promise  of  a  heaven 
where  "  there  is  fulness  of  joy  for  evermore,"  and  warns  back 
from  wickedness  by  the  threatening  of  a  worm  that  never 
dies,  and  a  fire  that  is  not  quenched.  It  was  not  redemption 
from  mere  temporary  evil  that  Christ  Jesus  effected.  The 
consequences  of  transgression  spread  themselves  through 
eternity;  and  the  Savior,  when  he  bowed  his  head  and  said, 
"  It  is  finished,"  had  provided  for  the  removal  of  these  con- 
sequences, in  all  the  immenseness  whether  of  their  extent  or 


ARGUMENT    FOR    THE    PERIL    OF    ITS    NEGLECT.  503 

their  duration.  And  wc  say  that  in  nothing  is  the  greatness 
of  salvation  more  evidenced  than  in  its  dealing  with  ever- 
lasting things :  it  did  not  indeed  make  man  immortal ;  but, 
(hiding  him  immortal,  and  his  immortality  one  of  agony  and 
shame,  it  sent  its  inilucnces  throughout  this  unlimited  exist- 
ence, wrung  the  curse  from  its  every  instant,  and  left  a  bless- 
ing in  its  stead.  Exceeding  great  is  our  salvation  in  this, 
that  it  opens  a  prospect  for  eternity  than  which  imagination 
can  conceive  none  more  brilliant,  if  we  close  with  the  proffer> 
and  none  more  appalling,  if  we  refuse. 

But  if  this  be  its  greatness,  what  does  the  greatness  prove 
of  those  by  whom  it  is  neglected  ?  In  order  to  your  being 
animated  to  the  throwing  off  the  tyranny  of  the  things  of 
time  and  sense,  the  Gospel  sets  before  you  an  array  of  mo- 
tive, concerning  which  it  is  no  boldness  to  say,  that,  if  in- 
effective, it  is  because  you  are  immovable.  If  heaven  fail 
to  attract,  and  hell  to  alarm — the  heaven  and  the  hell  which 
are  opened  to  us  in  the  revelation  of  Christ — it  can  only  be 
from  a  set  determination  to  continue  in  sin,  a  determination, 
proof  against  all  by  which,  as  rational  agents,  we  are  ca- 
pable of  being  influenced.  If  you  could  be  excited  by  re- 
ward, is  there  not  enough  in  heaven  ;  if  you  could  be  deter- 
red by  punishment,  is  there  not  enough  in  hell  ? 

What,  will  you  tell  me  that  you  can  be  roused,  that  your 
insensibility  is  not  such  as  it  is  impossible  to  overcome,  or 
rather,  that  your  choice  is  not  so  fixed  but  that  it  might  be 
swayed  by  adequate  inducement,  when  you  will  not  resign 
a  bauble  which  stands  in  competition  with  heaven,  nor  deny 
an  appetite  for  the  sake  of  escaping  hell  ?  Is  it  that  hea- 
ven is  not  sufficiently  glorious  ;  is  it  that  hell  is  not  suffi- 
ciently terrible  ?  We  can  admit  no  plea  from  deficiencies  in 
the  proposed  punishment  or  reward.  Indeed  there  can  be 
none  of  you  bold  enough  to  urge  it.  The  man  whom  hea- 
ven cannot  allure  from  sin,  the  man  whom  hell  cannot  scare 
from  sin,  would  a  brighter  heaven  (if  such  there  could  be,) 
or  a  fiercer  hell,  prevail  with  him  to  attempt  the  overcoming 
corruption  ?  Oh,  the  salvation  is  great,  greater  in  nothing 
than  in  the  reward  and  punishment  which  it  propounds  to 


504  THE  GREATNESS  OF  SALVATION  AN 

mankind  ;  for  of  both  it  may  be  said,  that  "  eye  hath  not 
seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither  have  entered  into  the  heart  of 
man."  But  then,  being  thus  great,  its  greatness  is  our  proof 
that  there  is  no  hope  of  moving  those  whom  it  moves  not. 
The  happiness  promised  to  obedience,  there  can  be  imagined 
none  richer  ;  the  wretchedness  threatened  to  disobedience, 
there  can  be  imagined  none  sterner.  And  yet  the  man  is 
unaffected.  He  is  not  attracted  by  the  happiness — then  I 
must  despair  of  attracting  him.  He  is  not  alarmed  by  the 
wretchedness— then  I  must  despair  of  alarming  him.  And, 
therefore,  it  is  the  greatness  of  the  salvation  which  shows 
me  his  peril.  Yea,  as  this  greatness  is  demonstrated  by  the 
proposition  of  everlasting  portions,  not  to  be  exceeded  in  the 
intenseness  whether  of  joy  or  of  wo,  and  which  therefore 
leave  no  inducement  untried  by  which  the  careless  may  be 
roused,  and  the  sensual  braced  to  self-denial,  we  seem  to  hear 
this  question  reverberated  alike  from  the  firmament  above 
with  its  homes  for  the  righteous,  and  from  the  abyss  beneath 
with  its  prisons  for  the  lost,  "  How  shall  we  escape,  if  we 
neglect  so  great  salvation  ?" 

Such,  brethren,  are  certain  of  the  reasons — and,  had  time 
permitted,  we  might  have  adduced  more — which  prove  the 
connection  between  the  greatness  of  salvation,  and  the  peril 
of  neglect.  And  now  we  ask  the  careless  and  the  worldly- 
minded  amongst  you,  whether  they  have  an  answer  to  give 
to  the  solemn  question  before  us.  The  demand  is,  "  How 
shall  we  escape  ?"  You  must  undoubtedly  have  some  reply 
in  readiness.  We  have  no  right  to  accuse  you  of  the  incal- 
culable folly  of  owning  that  there  is  only  one  way  of  escape 
from  the  most  terrible  judgments,  and  yet  taking  no  heed  to 
walk  in  that  way.  You  are  furnished  then  with  a  reply : 
we  will  not  charge  you  with  a  want  of  common  sense  :  we 
must  allow  you  the  credit  of  having  a  reason  to  give  for  de- 
stroying yourselves.  But  we  should  like  to  know  the  reason. 
We  can  hardly  imagine  its  form.  Perhaps  you  intend  to  pay 
attention  to  the  Gospel  hereafter.  But  no,  this  is  no  reason 
for  neglect.  This  confesses  the  necessity  of  giving  heed ; 
and  therefore  proves  you  more  than  ever  culpable  in  your 


ARGUMENT    FOR    THE    PERIL    OF    ITS    NEGLECT.  bV'O 

negligence.  Perhaps  you  contend  that  you  quite  admit  all 
the  claims  of  the  Gospel ;  that  you  are  amongst  those  who 
receive  it,  not  those  who  reject ;  and  that  you  know  not 
why  it  should  condemn  you,  since  you  give  it  heartily  the 
preference  to  every  other  religion.  But  no,  this  is  no  apology. 
It  might  be  plausible,  if  the  question  were,  How  shall  we 
escape,  if  we  disbelieve,  deny,  ridicule,  oppose,  so  great  sal- 
vation? but  oh,  sirs,  it  is,  "How  shall  we  escape  if  we 
neglect?"  To  neglect,  just  to  treat  with  coldness  or  careless- 
ness, to  give  attention  to  other  things  in  preference,  not 
the  being  the  openly  infidel,  but  the  actually  indifferent ; 
this  it  is  which,  if  there  be  truth  in  our  text,  insures  man's 
destruction. 

And  therefore  we  again  say  that  we  cannot  imagine  the 
answer  with  which,  thinking  calculating  beings  as  ye  are, 
you  would  parry  the  home-question  of  our  text.  But  of  this 
we  can  be  certain,  that  your  answer  has  no  worth.  The 
question  of  the  apostle  is  the  strongest  form  of  denial.  Ye 
cannot  escape  if  ye  neglect.  And  be  ye  well  assured,  that, 
if  ye  could  interrogate  the  spirits  in  wretchedness,  negli- 
gence would  be  that  which  they  would  chiefly  give  as  the 
cause  of  their  ruin.  There  would  be  comparatively  few  who 
would  tell  you  they  had  rejected  Christianity  ;  few  that  they 
had  embraced  deistical  views ;  few  that  they  had  invented 
for  themselves  another  mode  of  acceptance  ;  but  the  many, 
the  many,  their  tale  would  be,  that  they  designed,  but  de- 
layed to  hearken  to  the  Gospel ;  that  they  gave  it  their  as- 
sent, but  not  their  attention  ;  that, — are  ye  not  staggered  by 
the  likeness  to  yourselves? — though  they  knew,  they  did 
not  consider ;  apprised  of  danger,  they  took  no  pains  to  avert 
it ;  having  the  offer  of  life,  they  made  no  effort  to  secure  it ;  and 
therefore  perished,  finally,  miserably,  everlastingly,  through 
neglect  of  the  great  salvation.  God  grant  that  none  of  us, 
by  imitating  their  neglect,  share  their  misery. 


64 


8EK M O  N . 


ON  THE  EFFECTS  OF  CONSIDERATION/ 


"  When  I  consider,  I  am  afraid  of  Him." — Joe,  23  :  15. 

In  tins  chapter  Job  declares,  in  language  of  great  subli- 
mity, the  unsearchableness  of  God.  "  Behold,  I  go  forward, 
but  he  is  not  there,  and  backward,  but  I  cannot  perceive 
him  ;  on  the  left  hand  where  he  doth  work,  but  I  cannot 
behold  him;  he  hideth  himself  on  the  right  hand,  that  I 
cannot  see  him."  Vexed  with  many  and  sore  trials,  the  pa- 
triarch vainly  strove  to  understand  God's  dealings,  and, 
though  still  holding  Hist  his  integrity,  was  almost  tempted 
to  doubt  whether  he  should  escape  from  his  troubles.  He 
dwells  on  the  immutability  of  God  ;  and,  thinking  that  pos- 
sibly this  immutability  is  engaged  to  the  continuance  of  his 
sorrows,  only  heightens  his  anxieties  by  pondering  the  un- 
changeableness  of  God.  "  He  is  in  one  mind,  and  who  can 
turn  him?  and  what  his  soul  desireth,  even  that  he  doeth." 
If  there  had  gone  out  a  decree  against  him,  appointing  ca- 
lamity to  be  his  portion,  Job  felt  that  deliverance  was  not  to 
be  hoped  for.  "  Therefore,"  saith  he,  "  I  am  troubled  at  his 
presence ;  when  I  consider,  I  am  afraid  of  him." 

It  was  not,  you  observe,  a  hasty  glance  at  the  character 
of  God,  which  gave  rise  to  the  fear  which  the  patriarch  ex- 
presses.  His  fear  was  the  result  of  deep  meditation,  and  not 

*  A  collection  was  made  after  this  sermon,  in  support  of  the  Irish  Society 
of  London. 


ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION'.  HOT 

of  a  cursory  thought.  "  When  I  consider,  T  am  afraid  of 
him."  The  cursory  thought  might  have  included  nothing 
but  the  benevolence  of  God,  and  thus  have  induced  the 
sufferer  to  expect  relief  from  his  woes.  But  the  deep  medi- 
tation brought  under  review  many  attributes  of  the  Al- 
mighty, and  there  was  much  in  these  attributes  to  perplex 
and  discourage. 

It  may  indeed  have  been  only  the  unchangeableness  of 
God,  which,  engaging  the  consideration,  excited  the  fears  of 
the  patriarch.  But  we  are  not  bound,  in  discoursing:  on  our 
text,  to  limit  to  one  attribute  this  effect  of  consideration. 
There  is  the  statement  of  a  general  truth,  though,  in  the 
cace  before  us,  the  application  may  have  been  particular. 
That  the  fear,  or  dread,  of  God  is  the  produce  of  considera- 
tion ;  that  it  does  not  therefore  spring  from  ignorance,  or 
want  of  thought ;  this  is  the  general  truth  asserted  by  the 
passage,  and  which,  as  accurately  distinguishing  religion 
from  superstition,  demands  the  best  of  our  attention.  It  is 
not  to  be  doubted  that  a  superstitious  dread  of  a  Supreme 
Being  is  to  be  overcome  by  consideration  ;  and  it  is  as  little 
to  be  doubted  that  a  religious  dread  is  to  be  produced  by 
consideration.  The  man  who  has  thrown  off  all  fear  of 
God,  is  the  man  in  whose  thoughts  God  finds  little  or  no 
place.  If  you  could  fasten,  for  a  while,  this  man's  mind  to 
the  facts,  that  there  is  a  God,  that  he  takes  cognizance  of 
human  actions  as  moral  Governor  of  the  universe,  and  that 
he  will  hereafter  deal  with  us  by  the  laws  of  a  most  rigid 
retribution,  you  would  produce  something  like  a  dread  of 
the  Creator;  and  this  dread  wou Id  be  superstitious  or  reli- 
gious, according  to  the  falseness,  or  soundness,  of  principles 
admitted  and  inferences  deduced.  If  the  produced  dread 
were  superstitious,  it  would  give  way  on  a  due  consideration 
of  these  principles  and  inferences;  if  religious,  such  consi- 
deration would  only  deepen  and  strengthen  it. 

We  are  sure  that  the  absence  of  consideration  is  the  only 
account  which  can  be  given  of  the  absence  of  a  fear  of  the 
Almighty.  It  is  not,  and  it  cannot  be,  by  any  process  of 
thought,  or  mental  debate,  that  the  great  mass  of  our  fellow- 


508  ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION. 

men  work  themselves  into  a  kind  of  practical  atheism.  It  is 
by  keeping-  God  out  of  their  thoughts,  or  allowing  him  no- 
thing more  than  the  homage  of  a  faint  and  passing  remem- 
brance, that  they  contrive  to  preserve  that  surprising  indiffer- 
ence, which  would  almost  seem  to  argue  disbelief  of  his  ex- 
istence. And  there  is  not  one  in  this  assembly,  whatever 
may  be  his  unconcern  as  to  his  position  relatively  to  his 
Maker,  and  whatever  his  success  in  banishing  from  his 
mind  the  consequences  of  a  life  of  misdoing,  in  regard  of 
whom  we  have  other  than  a  thorough  persuasion,  that,  if  we 
could  make  him  consider,  Ave  should  also  make  him  fear. 

It  is  not  that  men  are  ignorant  of  facts  ;  it  is  that  they 
will  not  give  their  attention  to  facts.  Tliey  know  a  vast 
deal  which  they  do  not  consider.  You  cannot  be  observant 
of  what  passes  around  you,  or  within  yourselves,  and  fail 
to  perceive  how  useless  is  a  large  amount  of  knowledge, 
and  that  too  simply  through  want  of  consideration.  To 
borrow  the  illustration  of  a  distinguished  writer,  who  has  so 
treated  as  almost  to  have  exhausted  this  subject,  every  one 
knows  that  he  must  die  ;  and  yet  the  certainty  of  death  pro- 
duces no  effect  on  the  bulk  of  mankind.  It  is  a  thing  known, 
it  is  not  a  thing  considered  ;  and  therefore  those  who  are 
sure  that  they  are  mortal,  live  as  though  sure  they  were  im- 
mortal. Every  one  of  you  knows  that  there  is  a  judgment 
to  come.  But  may  we  not  fear  of  numbers  amongst  you, 
that  they  do  not  consider  that  there  is  a  judgment  to  come  ; 
and  may  we  not  ascribe  to  their  not  considering  what  they 
know,  i'their  persisting  in  conduct  which  must  unavoidably 
issue  in  utter  condemnation  ? 

We  might  multiply  this  kind  of  illustration.  But  the  fact 
is  so  apparent,  the  fact  of  knowledge  being  useless  because 
the  thing  known  is  not  considered,  that  it  were  but  wasting 
time  to  employ  it  on  its  proof.  We  may  suppose  that  we 
carry  with  us  the  assent  of  every  hearer,  when  we  say,  that, 
even  in  reference  to  the  things  of  this  life,  and  much  more 
of  the  next,  there  are  hundreds  who  have  knowledge  for  one 
who  has  consideration.  We  must  all  perceive  how  frequent 
it  is  for  truths  to  receive  the  assent  of  the  understanding, 


ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION.  509 

and  gain  a  lodgment  in  the  memory;  and  yet,  though  they 
may  be  of  stirring  moment,  to  exert  no  influence  on  the  con- 
duct. If  as  fast  as  we  gather  information  into  the  chambers 
of  the  mind,  we  were  also  gathering  motive  into  the  recesses 
of  the  soul,  it  is  evident  that  each  page  of  Scripture,  as  we 
possessed  ourselves  of  its  announcements,  would  minister  to 
our  earnestness  in  wrestling  for  immortality.  But  the  melan- 
choly fact  is,  that  we  may,  and  that  we  do,  increase  the 
amount  of  information,  without  practically  increasing  the 
amount  of  motive.  It  is  quite  supposable  that  there  are  some 
amongst  yourselves,  who,  by  a  regular  attendance  on  Sab- 
bath ministrations,  and  by  diligent  study  of  the  Bible,  have 
acquired  no  inconsiderable  acquaintance  with  the  scheme 
and  bearings  of  Christianity ;  but  who  are  nevertheless  as 
worldly-minded,  in  spite  of  their  theology,  as  though  igno- 
rant of  the  grand  truths  disclosed  by  revelation.  We  might 
subject  these  persons  to  a  strict  examination,  and  try  them 
in  the  several  departments  of  divinity.  And  they  might  come 
off  from  the  scrutiny  with  the  greatest  applause,  and  be  pro- 
nounced admirably  conversant  with  the  truths  of  the  Bible. 
But  of  all  the  knowledge  thus  displayed,  there  might  not  be 
a  particle  which  wielded  any  influence  over  actions.  The 
whole  might  be  reposing  inertly  in  the  solitudes  of  the  me- 
mory, ready  indeed  to  be  summoned  forth  when  its  possessor 
is  called  into  some  arena  of  controversy,  but  no  more  woven 
into  the  business  of  every-day  life,  than  if  it  were  knowledge 
of  facts  which  are  unimportant,  or  of  truths  which  are  spe- 
culative. And  the  main  reason  of  this  has  been  already  ad- 
vanced, the  want  of  consideration.  You  know  there  is  a 
God  ;  but  you  do  not  fear  this  God,  you  do  not  live  under  a 
sense  of  his  presence  and  an  apprehension  of  his  wrath,  be- 
cause you  do  not  consider  that  there  is  a  God. 

And  we  wish  it  well  observed  that  man  is  answerable  for 
this  want  of  consideration,  inasmuch  as  it  is  voluntary,  and 
not  unavoidable.  We  certainly  have  it  in  our  power,  not 
only  to  apply  ourselves  to  the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  but, 
when  the  knowledge  has  been  acquired,  to  direct  the  atten- 
tion to  the  tendencies  of  the  ascertained  truths.    If  this  be 


510  ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION. 

done,  there  is  every  likelihood  that  the  truths  will  produce 
their  right  effects  on  the  moral  feelings;  if  this  be  neglected, 
the  almost  certainty  is,  that,  whatever  their  nature,  they  will 
not  call  forth  those  emotions  which  they  are  both  intended 
and  calculated  to  excite.  The  truths  of  revelation  are  adapt- 
ed, according  to  the  constitution  of  our  moral  capacity,  to 
rouse  within  us  certain  feelings.  And  by  fixing  the  mind  on 
these  truths,  when  investigated  and  determined — and  this  is 
adding  consideration  to  knowledge — we  may  be  said  com- 
paratively to  insure  the  production  of  the  feelings  which  na- 
turally correspond  to  them,  and  thus  vastly  to  diminish,  if 
not  to  destroy,  the  probability  that  they  will  fail  of  effecting 
any  change  in  the  conduct. 

You  knoAv  sufficiently  well,  that,  if  you  obtain  a  know- 
ledge of  circumstances  which  may  exert  an  influence  over 
your  temporal  condition,  you  can,  and  in  most  cases  you  do, 
give  those  circumstances  your  close  consideration,  and  pon- 
der them  with  unwearied  assiduousness,  in  hopes  of  extract- 
ing some  directions  for  your  guidance  in  life.  And  if  you 
were  to  fail  to  add  consideration  to  knowledge,  you  would 
fairly  be  regarded  as  the  authors  of  every  disaster  which 
might  follow  on  your  not  turning  knowledge  to  account ; 
and  the  bankruptcy,  in  which  you  might  be  speedily  in- 
volved, would  excite  no  commiseration,  as  being  altogether 
chargeable  on  your  own  indolence  and  indifference.  So  that, 
if  you  have  knowledge,  it  is  reckoned  quite  your  own  fault, 
if  it  rest  inertly  in  the  mind,  in  place  of  stirring  up  emotions 
and  regulating  energies.  Your  fellow-men  deal  with  you  as 
with  free  agents,  possessing  the  power  of  considering  what 
they  know,  and  therefore  answerable  for  all  the  consequences 
of  a  want  of  consideration. 

And  what  we  wished  impressed  upon  you  at  this  stage  of 
our  discourse  is,  that  you  must  expect  the  same  dealing  at 
the  tribunal  of  the  Almighty,  as  you  thus  experience  at  the 
hands  of  your  fellow-men.  If  it  be  once  shown  that  you  had 
the  knowledge,  you  will  be  tried  as  beings  who  might  have 
had  the  consideration.  To  recur  to  our  illustration — you 
have  a  thorough   knowledge   that  you  must  die.     There 


ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION.  511 

passes  not  a  day  which  does  not,  in  some  shape  or  other, 
present  this  fact  to  your  observation,  and  call  upon  you,  by 
emphatic  demonstrations  of  human  mortality,  to  acknow- 
ledge your  own  frailty.  Ye  cannot  be  so  sure  that  any  com- 
bination of  circumstances  will  issue  in  the  derangement  and 
bankruptcy  of  your  affairs,  as  ye  are,  that,  at  a  period  which 
cannot  be. very  distant,  ye  will  be  withdrawn  altogether  from 
these  affairs,  and  ushered  into  an  untried  existence.  And  if, 
because,  you  have  not  fastened  attention  upon  circumstances 
which  threaten  you  with  temporal  calamity,  you  are  reckon- 
ed as  having  only  yourselves  to  blame  when  that  calamity 
bursts,  like  an  armed  man,  into  your  households,  assuredly 
you  must  hereafter  be  treated  as  your  own  wilful  destroyers 
if  you  make  no  preparation  for  that  dreaded  visitant  whom 
no  force  can  repulse,  and  no  bribe  allure,  from  your  doors. 
We  admit  that  much  has  been  taught,  and  boasted,  in  re- 
spect to  the  free-agency  of  man,  which  will  no  more  bear 
the  test  of  experience  than  of  Scripture.  But  we  cannot 
doubt  that  man  is  sufficiently  a  free  agent  to  make  the  path 
of  death,  in  which  he  walks,  the  path  of  his  own  choice  ;  so 
that,  just  as  he  is  free  to  consider  what  he  knows  in  refer- 
ence to  the  matters  of  this  life,  so  is  he  free  to  consider  what 
he  knows  in  reference  to  the  matters  of  the  next  life. 

And  we  give  it  you  all  as  a  warning,  whose  energy  in- 
creases with  your  acquaintance  with  the  truths  of  revelation, 
that  God  has  gifted  you  with  an  apparatus  of  moral  feelings, 
to  the  excitement  of  which  the  announcements  of  Scripture 
are  most  nicely  adapted ;  and  has  thus  so  fitted  the  Bible  to 
your  constitution,  that,  if  the  Bible  be  known,  and  you  un- 
concerned, there  is  evidence  of  wilful  indifference,  or  deter- 
mined opposition,  which  will  suffice  for  procuring  condem- 
nation at  the  judgment.  The  fact  that  we  must  give  account 
hereafter  for  every  action,  is,  of  all  others,  fitted  to  serve  as 
a  lever  which  may  raise  into  activity  the  powers  of  the 
inner  man.  But  then  it  is  consideration,  and  not  mere 
knowledge,  of  such  fact  which  converts  it  into  the  lever. 
Knowledge  only  introduces  it  into  the  mind.  But  when  in- 
troduced, it  will  lie  there  idle  and  powerless,  unless  taken 


512  ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION. 

up  and  handled  by  consideration.  And  forasmuch  as  you 
have  full  power  of  giving  consideration  to  the  fact — for  you 
can  give  your  consideration  to  a  fact  of  astronomy,  or  of 
chemistry ;  and  therefore  also,  if  you  choose,  to  a  fact  of 
theology — you  are  clearly  answerable  for  the  ineffectiveness 
of  the  fact,  if  it  never  move  the  torpid  energies  ;  and  can 
expect  nothing  but  the  being  condemned  at  the  last,  as  hav- 
ing known,  but  not  having  considered. 

But  we  have  somewhat  wandered  from  our  text :  at  least, 
we  have  dwelt  generally  on  the  want  of  consideration,  in 
place  of  confining  ourselves  to  the  instance  which  the  pas- 
sage exhibits.  We  go  back  to  our  proposition,  that  a  fear  of 
God  will  be  the  result  of  considering :  "  when  I  consider, 
I  am  afraid  of  him." 

It  is  our  earnest  wish  to  bring  the  careless  amongst  you, 
those  who  have  no  dread  of  God,  to  a  sense  of  the  awfulness 
of  that  mysterious  Being,  whose  existence  indeed  you  con- 
Jess,  but  of  whom,  notwithstanding,  your  whole  life  is  one 
perpetual  defiance.  Your  fault  is,  that,  immersing  yourselves 
in  the  business  or  pleasures  of  the  world,  you  never  sit 
down  to  a  serious  contemplation  of  your  state  :  in  other 
words,  that,  however  intently  you  fasten  your  thoughts  on 
vain  and  perishable  objects,  yet,  as  creatures  who  are  just  in 
the  infancy  of  existence,  you  never  consider.  And  we  have 
but  little  hope  of  prevailing  on  you,  by  any  urgency  of  re- 
monstrance, to  give  yourselves  to  the  considering  what  you 
know.  We  are  too  well  aware  that  the  prevailing  on  a  man 
to  consider  his  ways  lies  far  beyond  the  power  of  human 
persuasion  ;  seeing  that  the  mind  can  evade  all  external 
control,  and,  if  it  do  not  bind  itself,  can  defy  every  attempt 
to  overrule  or  direct.  But  we  can  give  you  certain  of  those 
processes  of  thought  which  would  almost  necessarily  be  fol- 
lowed out,  where  there  were  deep  and  solemn  musings  upon 
Deity.  We  may  thus  trace  the  connection  asserted  in  our 
text  between  consideration  and  fear.  Though  this  will  not 
compel  you  to  consider  for  yourselves,  it  will  leave  you  with 
less  excuse  than  ever  if  you  rest  content  with  mere  know- 
ledge ;  it  will  show  you  what  ought  to  be  going  forward  in 


ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION.  513 

your  own  minds,  and  thus  take  away  the  plea  of  ignorance, 
if  any  should  be  hardy  enough  to  advance  it. 

With  this  object,  we  will  examine  how  fear  of  God  is  pro- 
duced by  considering  what  we  know  of  God,  first  in  his  na- 
ture, and  secondly  in  his  works. 

Now  we  are  all  aware  how  powerful  a  restraint  is  imposed 
on  the  most  dissolute  and  profane,  by  the  presence  of  an  in- 
dividual who  will  not  countenance  them  in  their  impieties. 
80  long  as  they  are  under  observation,  they  will  not  dare  to 
yield  to  imperious  desires  :  they  must  shrink  into  a  solitude 
ere  they  will  perpetrate  crime,  or  give  indulgence  to  lusts. 
We  can  feel  confident  in  respect  of  the  most  worldly-minded, 
amongst  you,  that,  if  there  could  be  always  at  his  side  an  in- 
dividual of  whom  he  stood  in  awe,  and  whose  good  opinion 
he  was  anxious  to  cultivate,  he  would  abstain  from  many  of 
his  cherished  gratifications,  and  walk,  comparatively,  a 
course  of  self-denial  and  virtue.  He  would  be  arrested  in 
far  the  greater  part  of  his  purposes,  if  he  knew  that  he  was 
acting  under  the  eye  of  this  individual  ;  and  it  would  only 
be  when  assured  that  the  inspection  was  suspended  or  with- 
drawn, that  he  would  follow  unreservedly  the  bent  of  his 
desires.  But  it  is  amongst  the  most  surprising  of  moral  phe- 
nomena, that  the  effect,  which  would  be  produced  by  a  hu- 
man inspector,  is  scarcely  ever  produced  by  a  divine.  If  a 
man  can  elude  the  observation  of  his  fellow-men,  he  straight- 
way acts  as  though  he  had  eluded  all  observation  :  place 
him  where  there  is  no  other  of  his  own  race,  and  he  will 
feel  as  if,  in  the  strictest  sense,  alone.  The  remembrance 
that  the  eye  of  Deity  is  upon  him,  that  the  infinite  God  is 
continually  at  his  side — so  that  there  is  absurdity  in  speak- 
ing of  a  solitude  ;  every  spot  throughout  the  expansions  of 
space  being  inhabited  by  the  Almighty — this  remembrance, 
we  say,  is  without  any  practical  effect ;  or  rather  the  fact, 
though  universally  known,  is  not  considered  ;  and  therefore 
the  man,  though  in  contact  with  his  Maker,  fancies  himself 
in  loneliness,  and  acts  as  if  certain  of  being  unobserved. 

But  let  consideration  be  superadded  to  knowledge,  and 
there  will  necessarily  be  produced  a  fear  or  dread  of  the 


514  ON    THE     EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION, 

Creator.  There  is  nothing  so  overwhelming  to  the  mind, 
when  giving  itself  to  the  contemplation  of  a  great  first  cause , 
as  the  omnipresence  of  God.  That,  if  I  were  endowed  with 
unlimited  powers  of  motion,  so  that  in  a  moment  I  might 
traverse  unnumbered  leagues,  I  could  never  for  a  lonely  in- 
stant escape  from  God  ;  that  he  would  remain  at  the  spot  I 
left,  and  yet  be  found  at  the  spot  I  reached  ;  of  all  truths  this 
is  perhaps  the  most  bewildering  and  incomprehensible,  see- 
ing that,  more  than  any  other,  it  separates  the  Infinite  Being 
from  all  finite.  But  let  me  consider  this  truth  ;  let  me,  if  it 
baffle  my  understanding,  endeavor  to  keep  it  in  active  re- 
membrance. Wheresoever  I  am,  and  whatsoever  I  do,  "  thou, 
O  God,  seest  me."  Then  it  is  not  possible  that  the  least  item 
of  my  conduct  may  escape  observation ;  that  I  can  be  so 
stealthy  in  my  wickedness  as  to  commit  it  undetected.  Hu- 
man laws  are  often  severe  in  their  enactments  ;  but  they  may 
be  often  transgressed  without  discovery,  and  therefore  with 
impunity.  But  there  is  no  such  possibility  in  regard  to  divine 
laws.  The  Legislator  himself  is  ever  at  my  side.  The  mur- 
kiness  of  the  midnight  shrouds  me  not  from  him.  The  soli- 
tariness of  the  scene  is  no  proof  against  his  presence.  The 
depths  of  my  own  heart  lie  open  to  his  inspection.  And  thus 
every  action,  every  word,  every  thought,  is  as  distinctly 
marked  as  though  there  were  none  but  myself  in  the  uni- 
verse, and  all  the  watchfulness,  and  all  the  scrutiny  of  God, 
were  employed  on  my  deportment.  What  then  ?  "  when  1 
consider,  I  am  afraid  of  him."  The  more  I  reflect,  the  more 
awful  God  appears.  To  break  the  law  in  the  sight  of  the 
lawgiver ;  to  brave  the  sentence  in  the  face  of  the  Judge ; 
there  is  a  hardihood  in  this  which  would  seem  to  overpass 
the  worst  human  presumption  ;  and  we  can  only  say  of  the 
man  who  knows  that  he  does  this  whensoever  he  offends, 
that  he  knows,  but  does  not  consider. 

Oh  !  we  are  sure  that  an  abiding  sense  of  God's  presence 
would  put  such  a  restraint  on  the  outgoings  of  wickedness, 
that,  to  make  it  universal  were  almost  to  banish  impiety 
from  the  earth.  Vie  are  sure  that,  if  every  man  went  to  his 
business,  or  his  recreation,  fraught  with  the  consciousness 


ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION*.  5  I  ") 

that  the  Being-,  who  will  decide  his  destiny  for  eternity,  ac- 
companies him  in  his  every  step,  observes  all  his  doings, 
and  scrutinizes  all  his  motives,  an  apprehension  of  the 
dreadfulness  of  the  Almighty,  and  of  the  utter  peril  of  violat- 
ing his  precepts,  would  take  possession  of  the  whole  mass  of 
society ;  and  there  would  be  a  confession  from  all  ranks  and 
all  ages,  that,  however  they  might  have  known  God  as  the 
Omnipresent,  and  yet  made  light  of  his  authority,  when 
they  considered  God  as  the  Omnipresent,  they  were  over- 
awed and  afraid  of  him. 

But  again — it  is  not  the  mere  feeling  that  God  exercises  a 
supervision  over  my  actions,  which  will  produce  that  dread 
of  him  which  Job  asserts  in  our  text.  The  moral  character 
of  God  will  enter  largely  into  considerations  upon  Deity, 
and  vastly  aggravate  that  fear  which  is  produced  by  his 
omnipresence.  Of  course,  it  is  not  the  certainty  that  a 
being  sees  me,  which,  of  itself,  will  make  me  fear  that  being. 
There  must  be  a  further  certainty,  that  the  conduct  to  which 
I  am  prone  is  displeasing  to  him  ;  and  that,  if  persisted  in, 
it  will  draw  upon  me  his  vengeance.  Let  me  then  consider 
God,  and  determine,  from  his  necessary  attributes,  whether 
there  can  be  hope  that  he  will  pass  over  without  punishment, 
what  cannot  escape  his  observation. 

We  suppose  God  just,  and  we  suppose  him  merciful ;  and 
it  is  in  settling  the  relative  claims  of  these  properties,  that 
men  fancy  they  find  ground  for  expecting  impunity  at  the 
last.  The  matter  to  be  adjusted  is,  how  a  being,  confessedly 
love,  can  so  yield  to  the  demands  of  justice  as  to  give  up  his 
creatures  to  torment ;  and  the  difficulty  of  the  adjustment 
makes  way  for  the  flattering  persuasion,  that  love  will  here- 
after triumph  over  justice,  and  that  threatenings,  having 
answered  their  purpose  in  the  moral  government  of  God, 
will  not  be  so  rigidly  exacted  as  to  interfere  with  the  work- 
ings of  unbounded  compassion.  But  it  is  not  by  considering 
that  men  encourage  themselves  in  the  thought,  that  the 
claims  of  love  and  of  justice  will  be  found  hereafter  at  vari- 
ance, and  that,  in  the  contest  between  the  two,  those  of  love 
will  prevail.    Through  not  considering,  men  have  hope  in 


516  ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION. 

God ;  let  them  only  consider,  and  we  are  bold  to  say  they 
will  be  afraid  of  God. 

If  I  do  but  reflect  seriously  on  the  love  of  my  Maker,  I 
must  perceive  it  to  be  a  disposition  to  produce  the  greatest 
amount  of  happiness,  by  upholding  through  the  universe 
those  principles  of  righteousness  with  whose  overthrow 
misery  stands  indissolubly  connected.  But  it  is  quite  evi- 
dent, that,  when  once  evil  has  been  introduced,  this  greatest 
amount  of  happiness  is  not  that  which  would  result  from 
the  unconditional  pardon  of  every  worker  of  evil.  Such 
pardon  would  show  the  abandonment  of  the  principles  of 
righteousness,  and  therefore  spread  consternation  and  dis- 
may amongst  the  unfallen  members  of  God's  intelligent 
household.  A  benevolence  which  should  set  aside  justice, 
would  cease  to  be  benevolence  :  it  would  be  nothing  but  a 
weakness,  which,  in  order  to  snatch  a  few  from  deserved 
misery,  overturned  the  laws  of  moral  government,  and  ex- 
posed myriads  to  anarchy  and  wretchedness.  And  yet  fur- 
ther— unless  God  be  faithful  to  his  threatening?,  I  have  no 
warrant  for  believing  that  he  will  be  faithful  to  his  promis- 
es ;  if  he  deny  himself  in  one,  he  ceases  to  be  God,  and 
there  is  an  end  of  all  reasonable  hope  that  he  will  make 
good  the  other. 

So  that  however,  on  a  hasty  glance,  and  forming  my  esti- 
mate of  benevolence  from  the  pliancy  of  human  sympathies, 
which  are  wrought  on  by  a  tear,  and  not  proof  against  com- 
plaint, I  may  think  that  the  love  of  the  Almighty  will  forbid 
the  everlasting  misery  of  any  of  his  creatures  ;  let  me  con- 
sider, and  the  dreamy  expectation  of  a  weak  and  womanish 
tenderness  will  give  place  to  apprehension  and  dread.  I  con- 
sider ;  and  I  see  that,  if  God  be  not  true  to  his  word,  he  con- 
founds the  distinctions  between  evil  and  good,  destroys  his 
own  sovereignty,  and  shakes  the  foundations  of  happiness 
through  the  universe.  I  consider  ;  and  I  perceive  that  to  let 
go  unvisited  the  impenitent,  would  be  to  forfeit  the  character 
of  a  righteous  moral  governor,  and  to  proclaim  to  every  rank 
of  intelligence,  in  all  the  circuits  of  immensity,  that  law  was 
abolished,  and  disobedience  made  safe.    I  consider  ;  and  I 


ON  THE  EFFECTS  OF  CONSIDERATION.         517 

observe  that  a  love,  which  triumphed  over  justice,  could  not 
be  the  love  of  a  perfect  being ;  for  the  love  of  a  perfect  being, 
whatever  its  yearnings  over  myself,  must  include  love  of 
justice ;  so  that  I  trust  to  what  God  cannot  feel,  when  I  trust 
to  a  compassion  which  cannot  allow  punishment. 

And  thus,  when  1  consider  there  is  no  resting-place  for  the 
spirit  in  the  flattering  delusion,  that,  in  the  moment  of  terri- 
ble extremity,  when  the  misdoings  of  a  long  life  shall  have 
given  in  their  testimony,  mercy  will  interpose  between  jus- 
tice and  the  criminal,  and  ward  off  the  blow,  and  welcome 
to  happiness.  Every  attribute  of  Deity,  benevolence  itself  as 
well  as  justice,  and  holiness,  and  truth,  rises  against  the  de- 
lusion, and  warns  me  that  to  cherish  it  is  to  go  headlong  to 
destruction.  The  theory  that  God  is  too  loving  to  take  ven- 
geance, will  not  bear  being  considered.  The  notion  that  the 
judge  will  prove  less  rigid  than  the  lawgiver,  will  not  bear 
being  considered.  The  opinion  that  the  purposes  of  a  moral 
government  may  have  been  answered  by  the  threatening,  so 
as  not  to  need  the  infliction,  will  not  bear  being  considered. 
And  therefore,  if  I  have  accustomed  myself  to  such  a  repre 
sentation  of  Deity  as  makes  benevolence,  falsely  so  called, 
the  grave  of  every  other  attribute;  and  if,  allured  by  such 
representation,  I  have  quieted  anxiety,  and  kept  down  the 
pleadings  of  conscience  ;  consideration  will  scatter  the  delu- 
sion, and  gird  me  round  with  terrors  ;  whilst  I  look  only  on 
the  surface  of  things,  I  may  be  confident,  but  when  I  consi- 
der, I  am  afraid. 

Oh  !  it  is  not,  as  some  would  persuade  you,  the  dream  of 
gloomy  and  miscalculating  men,  that  a  punishment,  the 
very  mention  of  which  curdles  the  blood  and  makes  the 
limbs  tremble,  awaits,  through  the  long  hereafter,  those  who 
set  at  naught  the  atonement  effected  by  Christ.  It  is  not  the 
picture  of  a  diseased  imagination,  nursed  in  error  and  tram- 
meled by  enthusiasm,  that  of  God,  who  now  plies  us  with 
the  overtures  of  forgiveness,  coming  forth  with  all  the  artil- 
lery of  wrath,  and  dealing  out  vengeance  on  those  who  have 
"  done  despite  to  the  spirit  of  grace."  We  bring  the  dream 
to  the  rigid  investigations  of  wakefulness  ;  we  expose  the 


518  ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION. 

picture  to  the  microscopes  of  the  closest  meditation  ;  and 
when  men  would  taunt  us  with  our  belief  in  unutterable  tor- 
ments, portioned  out  by  a  Creator  who  loves,  (with  a  love 
overpassing-  language,)  the  very  meanest  of  his  creatures  ; 
and  when  they  would  smile  at  our  credulity  in  supposing 
that  God  can  act  in  a  manner  so  repugnant  to  his  confessed 
nature  ;  we  retort  on  them  at  once  the  charge  of  adopting 
an  unsupported  theory.  We  tell  them,  that,  if  with  them  we 
could  escape  from  thought,  and  smother  reflection,  then  with 
them  we  might  give  harborage  to  the  soothing  persuasion 
that  there  is  no  cause  for  dread,  and  that  God  is  of  too 
yearning  a  compassion  to  resign  aught  of  humankind  to  be 
broken  on  the  wheel  or  scathed  by  the  fire.  But  it  is  in 
proportion  as  the  mind  fastens  itself  upon  God  that  alarm  is 
excited.  Thought,  in  place  of  dissipating,  generates  terror. 
And  thus,  paralyze  my  reason,  debar  me  from  every  exer- 
cise of  intellect,  reduce  me  to  the  idiot,  and  I  shall  be  care- 
less and  confident :  but  leave  me  the  equipment  and  use  of 
mental  faculties,  and  "  when  I  consider,  I  am  afraid  of  him." 

But  the  connection  between  consideration  and  fear  will 
be  yet  more  evident,  if  the  works  of  God  engage  our  atten- 
tion. We  have  hitherto  considered  only  the  nature  of  God. 
But  if  we  now  meditate  on  either  creation  or  redemption, 
under  which  two  divisions  we  may  class  the  works  of  God, 
we  shall  find  additional  proof  of  the  truth  of  the  saying, 
"  when  I  consider,  I  am  afraid  of  him." 

Now  Ave  readily  admit  that  a  fear,  or  dread,  of  the  Al- 
mighty is  not  the  feeling  ordinarily  excited  by  the  magnifi- 
cence of  the  heavens,  or  the  loveliness  of  a  landscape.  It 
most  frequently  happens,  unless  the  mind  be  so  morally 
deadened  as  to  receive  no  impressions  from  the  splendid  pa- 
norama, that  sentiments  of  warm  admiration,  and  of  confi- 
dence in  God  as  the  benignant  Parent  of  the  universe,  are 
elicited  by  exhibitions  of  creative  wisdom  and  might.  And 
we  are  enough  from  designing  to  assert,  that  the  exhibitions 
are  not  calculated  to  produce  such  sentiments.  We  think 
that  the  broad  and  varied  face  of  nature  serves  as  a  mirror, 
in  which  the  christian  may  trace  much  that  is  most  endear- 


ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION.  510 

ing  in  the  character  of  his  Maker.  We  should  reckon  it  fair 
evidence  against  the  piety  of  an  individual,  if  he  could  gaze 
on  the  stars  in  their  courses,  or  travel  over  the  provinces  of 
this  globe,  and  mark  with  what  profusion  all  that  can  mi- 
nister to  human  happiness  is  scattered  around,  and  yet  be 
conscious  of  no  ascendings  of  heart  towards  that  benevolent 
Father  who  hath  given  to  man  so  glorious  a  dwelling,  and 
overarched  it  with  so  brilliant  a  canopy.  Where  there  is  a 
devout  spirit,  we  are  sure  that  the  placing  a  man  whence  he 
may  look  forth  on  some  majestic  development  of  scenery,  on 
luxuriant  vallies,  and  the  amphitheatre  of  mountains,  and 
the  windings  of  rivers,  is  the  placing  him  where  he  will 
learn  a  new  lesson  in  theology,  and  grow  warmer  in  his 
love  of  that  Eternal  Being  <;  who  in  the  beginning  created 
the  heavens  and  the  earth/' 

But  we  speak  now  of  what  is  adapted  to  the  producing 
fear  of  God  in  the  careless  and  unconverted  man  :  and  we 
say  that  it  is  only  through  want  of  consideration  that  such 
fear  is  not  excited  by  the  works  of  creation.  The  unconvert- 
ed man,  as  well  as  the  converted,  can  take  delight  in  the 
beauties  of  nature,  and  be  conscious  of  ecstacy  of  spirit,  as 
his  eye  gathers  in  the  wonders  of  the  material  universe. 
But  the  converted  man,  whilst  the  mighty  picture  is  before 
him,  and  the  sublime  features  and  the  lovely  successively 
fasten  his  admiration,  considers  who  spread  out  the  land- 
scape and  gave  it  its  splendor ;  and  from  such  consideration 
he  derives  fresh  confidence  in  the  God  whom  he  feels  to  be 
his  God,  pledged  to  uphold  him,  and  supply  his  every  want. 
The  unconverted  man,  on  the  contrary,  will  either  behold 
the  architecture  without  giving  a  thought  to  the  architect ; 
or,  observing  how  exquisite  a  regard  for  his  well-being  may 
be  traced  in  the  arrangements  of  creation,  will  strengthen 
himself  in  his  appeal  to  the  compassions  of  Deity,  by  the 
tender  solicitudes  of  which  he  can  thus  prove  himself  the 
subject.  If  he  gather  any  feeling  from  the  spreadings  of  the 
landscape,  beyond  that  high-wrought  emotion  which  is 
wakened  by  the  noble  combinations  of  rock,  and  lake,  and 
cloud,  and  forest — just  as  though  all  the  poetry  of  the  soul 


520  ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION. 

were  responding  to  some  melodious  and  magnificent  sum- 
mons—it is  only  the  feeling  that  God  is  immeasurably  be- 
nevolent ;  and  that,  having  been  so  careful  of  man's  happi- 
ness in  time,  he  will  not  abandon  him  to  wretchedness 
through  eternity. 

But  we  should  like  to  bring  this  romantic  and  Arcadian 
theology  to  the  test  of  consideration.  We  believe,  that,  if  we 
could  make  the  man  consider,  he  would  not  be  encouraged 
by  the  tokens  of  loving-kindness  with  which  all  nature  is 
charactered,  to  continue  the  life  of  indifference  or  dissolute- 
ness. There  are  two  ideas  which  seem  to  us  furnished  by 
the  works  of  creation,  when  duly  considered.  The  first  is, 
that  nothing  can  withstand  Cod;  the  second,  that  nothing 
can  escape  him.  When  I  muse  on  the  stupendousness  of  cre- 
ation ;  when  I  think  of  countless  worlds  built  out  of  nothing 
by  the  simple  word  of  Jehovah ;  my  conviction  is  that  God 
must  be  irresistible,  so  that  the  opposing  him  is  the  opposing 
Omnipotence.  But  if  I  cannot  withstand  God,  I  may  possibly 
escape  him.  Insignificant  as  I  am,  an  inconsiderable  unit  on 
an  inconsiderable  globe,  may  I  not  be  overlooked  by  this  ir- 
resistible Being,  and  thus,  as  it  were,  be  sheltered  by  my  lit- 
tleness ?  If  I  would  answer  this  question,  let  me  consider 
creation  in  its  minutest  departments.  Let  me  examine  the 
least  insect,  the  animated  thing  of  a  day  and  an  atom.  How 
it  glows  with  deity  !  How  busy  has  God  been  with  polishing 
the  joints,  and  feathering  the  wings,  of  this  almost  imper- 
ceptible recipient  of  life  !  How  carefully  has  he  attended  to 
its  every  want,  supplying  profusely  whatever  can  gladden 
its  ephemeral  existence  !  Dare  I  think  this  tiny  insect  over- 
looked by  God?  Wonderful  in  its  structure,  beautiful  in  its 
raiment  of  the  purple  and  the  gold  and  the  crimson,  sur- 
rounded abundantly  by  all  that  is  adapted  to  the  cravings  of 
its  nature,  can  I  fail  to  regard  it  as  fashioned  by  the  skill, 
and  watched  by  the  providence,  of  him  who  "  meted  out 
heaven  with  a  span,  and  measured  the  waters  in  the  hollow 
of  his  hand?"  It  were  as  easy  to  persuade  me,  when  con- 
sidering, that  the  archangel,  moving  in  majesty  and  burning 
with  beauty,  is  overlooked  by  God,  as  that  this  insect,  liveried 


OH     lilt    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION.  521 

as  it  is  in  splendor  and  throned  in  plenty,  is  unobserved  by 
Him  who  alone  could  have  formed  it. 

And  if  the  least  of  animated  things  be  thus  subject  to  the 
inspections  of  God,  who  or  what  shall  escape  those  inspec- 
tions, and  be  screened  by  its  insignificance?  Till  I  consider, 
I  may  fancy,  that,  occupied  with  the  affairs  of  an  unbounded 
empire,  our  Maker  can  give  nothing  more  than  a  general  at- 
tention to  the  inhabitants  of  a  solitary  planet ;  and  that  con- 
sequently an  individual  like  myself  may  well  hope  to  escape 
the  severity  of  his  scrutiny.  But  when  I  consider,  I  go  from 
the  planet  to  the  atom.  I  pass  from  the  population  of  this 
globe,  in  the  infancy  of  their  immortality,  to  the  breathing 
particles  which  must  perish  in  the  hour  of  their  birth.  And 
I  cannot  find  that  the  atom  is  overlooked.  I  cannot  find  that 
one  of  its  fleeting  tenantry  is  unobserved  and  uncared  for.  I 
consider  then ;  but  consideration  scatters  the  idea,  that,  be- 
cause I  am  but  the  insignificant  unit  of  an  insignificant  race, 
"  God  will  not  see,  neither  will  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  re- 
gard." And  thus,  by  considering  the  works  of  creation,  I 
reach  the  persuasion  that  nothing  can  escape  God,  just  as  be- 
fore that  nothing  can  withstand  him.  What  then  will  be  the 
feeling  which  consideration  generates  in  reference  to  God? 
I  consider  God  as  revealed  by  creation  ;  and  he  appears  be- 
fore me  with  a  might  which  can  crush  every  offender,  and 
with  a  scrutiny  which  can  detect  every  offence.  Oh  then,  if 
it  be  alike  impossible  to  resist  God,  and  to  conceal  from  God, 
is  he  not  a  being  of  whom  to  stand  in  awe ;  and  shall  I  not 
again  confess,  that  "  when  I  consider,  I  am  afraid  of  him  ?" 

We  would  just  observe,  in  order  to  the  completeness  of  this 
portion  of  our  argument,  that  it  must  be  want  of  considera- 
tion which  makes  us  read  only  God's  love  in  the  works  of 
creation.  We  say  of  the  man  who  infers  nothing  but  the 
benevolence  of  Deity  from  the  firmament  and  the  landscape, 
just  as  though  no  other  attribute  were  graven  on  the  encom- 
passing scenery,  that  he  contents  himself  with  a  superficial 
glance,  or  blinds  himself  to  the  traces  of  wrath  and  devasta- 
tion. That  we  live  in  a  disorganized  section  of  the  universe  ; 
that  our  globe  has  been  the  scene  and  subject  of  mighty  con- 
66 


522  ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION. 

vulsions ;  we  hold  these  facts  to  be  as  legible  in  the  linea- 
ments of  nature,  as  that  "  the  Lord  is  good  to  all,  and  his 
tender  mercies  are  over  all  his  works."  There  is  a  vast  deal 
in  the  appearances  of  the  earth,  and  in  the  phenomena  of  the 
elements,  to  assure  us  that  evil  has  been  introduced  amongst 
us,  and  has  already  provoked  the  vengeance  of  God.  So 
that  a  considering  man,  if  he  make  the  visible  creation  the 
object  of  his  reflection,  will  reach  the  conclusion,  that,  what- 
ever may  be  the  compassions  of  his  Maker,  he  can  interfere 
for  the  punishment  of  iniquity— a  conclusion  which  at  once 
dissipates  the  hope,  that  the  love  of  God  will  mitigate,  if  not 
remove,  deserved  penalties,  and  which  therefore  strengthens 
our  proof  that,  when  we  consider,  we  shall  be  afraid  of  God. 

But  we  have  yet,  in  the  last  place,  to  speak  briefly  on  the 
noblest  of  God's  works,  the  work  of  redemption.  Is  it  possi- 
ble that,  if  I  consider  this  work,  I  shall  be  afraid  of  God  ? 
We  premise  that,  throughout  our  discourse,  we  have  endea- 
vored to  deal  with  popular  delusions,  and  to  show  you  how 
consideration,  superadded  to  knowledge,  would  rouse  the 
careless  and  indifferent.  We  have  maintained,  all  along, 
that  the  mere  knowledge  of  truths  may  lie  inertly  in  the 
mind,  or  furnish  ground- work  for  some  false  and  flattering 
hypothesis.  But  this  is  saying  nothing  against  the  worth  or 
tendency  of  these  truths ;  it  is  wholly  directed  against  the 
not  considering  what  we  know.  Thus  the  question  with 
respect  to  redemption  is  simply,  whether  this  scheme,  as 
known  by  the  mass  of  men,  may  not  lull  those  fears  of  God 
which  ought  to  be  stirring  in  their  breasts ;  and  whether 
this  scheme,  as  considered,  would  not  make  them  afraid  of 
God  ?  We  learn  from  the  Epistles,  that  there  may  be  such 
a  thing  as  continuing  in  sin  that  grace  may  abound— a  fact 
which  sufficiently  shows  that  redemption  may  be  abused  ; 
and  if  abused,  it  is,  we  argue,  through  not  being  considered. 

It  is  our  duty,  as  a  minister  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  to 
dwell  largely  on  the  love  which  God  feels  towards  sinners, 
and  to  point  continually  to  the  demonstration  of  that  love 
in  the  gift  of  his  only  and  well-beloved  Son.  We  cannot 
speak  in  over-wrought  terms  of  the  readiness  of  the  Al- 


ON    THE     EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION.  523 

mighty  to  forgive,  and  of  the  amplitude  of  the  atonement  ef- 
fected by  the  Mediator.  We  are  charged  with  the  offer  of 
pardon  to  the  whole  mass  of  human  kind  :  enough  that  a 
being  is  man,  and  we  are  instructed  to  beseech  him  to  be  re- 
conciled to  God.  And  a  glorious  truth  it  is,  that  no  limita- 
tions are  placed  on  the  proffered  forgiveness  ;  but  that, 
Christ  having  died  for  the  world,  the  world,  in  all  its  de- 
partments and  generations,  may  take  salvation  "  without 
money  and  without  price."  We  call  it  a  glorious  truth,  be- 
cause there  is  thus  every  thing  to  encourage  the  meanest 
and  unworthiest,  if  they  will  close  with  the  offer,  and  accept 
deliverance  in  the  one  appointed  way.  But  then  it  is  quite 
possible  that  the  Gospel  offers,  thus  cheering  to  the  humble 
and  contrite,  may  be  wrested  into  an  encouragement  to  the 
obdurate  and  indifferent.  Men  may  know  that  God  has 
so  loved  them  as  to  give  his  Son  to  die  for  them ;  and 
then,  through  not  considering,  may  imagine  that  a  love  thus 
stupendously  displayed,  can  never  permit  the  final  wretch- 
edness of  its  objects.  The  scheme  of  redemption,  though 
itself  the  most  thrilling  homily  against  sin,  may  be  viewed 
by  those  who  would  fain  build  on  the  uncovenanted  mer- 
cies of  God,  as  proving  a  vast  improbability  that  creatures, 
so  beloved  as  ourselves,  and  purchased  at  so  inconceivable  a 
price,  will  ever  be  consigned  to  the  ministry  of  vengeance. 
Hence,  because  they  know  the  fact  of  this  redemption,  the 
careless  amongst  you  have  hope  in  God  ;  but,  if  they  consi- 
dered this  fact,  they  would  be  afraid  of  him. 

There  is  nothing  which,  when  deeply  pondered,  is  more 
calculated  to  excite  fears  of  God,  than  that  marvellous  inter- 
position on  our  behalf  which  is  the  alone  basis  of  legitimate 
hope.  When  I  consider  redemption,  what  a  picture  of  God's 
hatred  of  sin  rises  before  me  ;  what  an  exhibition  of  his  re- 
solve to  allow  justice  to  exact  all  its  claims.  The  smoking 
cities  of  the  plain  ;  the  deluged  earth  with  its  overwhelmed 
population  ;  the  scattered  Jews,  strewing  the  globe  like  the 
fragments  of  a  mighty  shipwreck — nothing  can  tell  me  so 
emphatically  as  Christ  dying,  "the just  for  the  unjust,"  how 
God  abhors  sin,  and  how  determined  he  is  to  punish  sin. 


524  ON     THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION. 

And  if  God  could  deal  so  awfully  and  terribly  with  his  own 
Son,  when  bearing  the  weight  of  imputed  transgression, 
will  he  spare  me— oh,  it  is  as  though  he  loved  me  better 
than  his  Son — if  I  appear  before  him  with  the  burden  of 
unrepented  sins  :  if,  perverting  his  efforts  to  turn  me  from 
iniquity  into  encouragements  to  brave  all  his  threatenings,  I 
build  on  the  atonement  whilst  I  break  the  commandments  ? 
I  consider  God  as  manifested  in  redemption  ;  he  shows  him- 
self a  holy  God,  and  therefore  do  I  fear  him.  He  displays 
his  determination  to  take  vengeance,  and  therefore  do  I  fear 
him.  He  exhibits  the  fixed  principles  of  his  moral  govern- 
ment, and  therefore  do  I  fear  him.  He  bids  the  sword  awake 
against  his  fellow,  and  therefore  do  I  fear  him.  He  writes 
the  condemnation  of  the  impenitent  in  the  blood  which 
cleanses  those  who  believe,  and  therefore  do  I  fear  him. 
Oh,  I  might  cast  a  hasty  glance  at  the  scheme  of  redemp- 
tion, and  observe  little  more  than  the  unmeasured  loving- 
kindness  which  it  manifests.  I  might  gather  from  it  the 
preciousness  of  the  human  soul  in  God's  sight,  a  precious- 
ness  so  vast  that  its  loss  must  be  a  catastrophe  at  which  the 
universe  shudders,  seeing  its  redemption  was  effected  amid 
the  throes  and  convulsions  of  nature.  And  this  might  con- 
firm me  in  the  delusion  that  I  may  sin  with  impunity.  But 
let  me  reflect  on  the  scheme,  and  God  is  before  me,  robed  in 
awfulness  and  clothed  with  judgment,  vindicating  the  ma- 
jesty of  his  insulted  law  and  relaxing  not  one  tittle  of  its 
penalties,  bearing  out  to  the  letter  the  words  of  the  prophet, 
"  the  Lord  will  take  vengeance  on  his  adversaries,  and  he 
reserveth  wrath  for  his  enemies  ;"  and  therefore  it  must  be 
with  redemption,  as  it  is  with  creation,  "  When  I  consider,  I 
am  afraid  of  him." 

And  now,  brethren,  what  words  shall  we  use  of  you  but 
these  of  Moses,  "  O  that  they  were  wise,  that  they  under- 
stood this,  that  they  would  consider  their  latter  end  ?"  We 
simply  wish  to  bring  you  to  consider  ;  and  then,  we  be- 
lieve, you  will  both  discover  what  is  duty,  and  determine  to 
follow  it. 

This  is  the  sum  of  what  we  have  to  urge  in  respect  to  the 


ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDER  ATION .  52  5 

charity  which  now  solicits  your  support.  Consider  what  is 
your  duty  towards  your  benighted  countrymen,  and  we 
have  no  fears  of  your  failing  to  be  liberal  in  your  contribu- 
tions. It  is  only  through  the  not  considering,  the  not  consi- 
dering that  you  are  merely  stewards  of  your  property,  the 
not  considering  that  Christ  is  to  be  ministered  to  in  the  per- 
sons of  the  destitute,  the  not  considering  that  "  he  that  hath 
pity  on  the  poor  lendeth  to  the  Lord  ;"  it  is  only  from  such 
causes  as  these,  so  palpable  and  urgent  is  the  duty,  that  you 
can  fail  to  give  hearty  support  to  the  institution  which  now 
appeals  to  your  bounty.  The  exclusive  object  of  the  Irish 
Society  is  to  communicate  religious  knowledge  to  the  pea- 
santry of  Ireland  through  the  medium  of  the  Irish  language. 
There  are  nearly  three  millions  of  individuals  in  Ireland 
who  can  speak  the  Irish  language  ;  and  of  these,  at  least  five 
hundred  thousand  can  speak  no  other.  There  are  five  hun- 
dred thousand  of  your  countrymen,  to  whom  the  Hebrew 
tongue  would  be  as  intelligible  as  the  English  ;  and  who 
can  no  more  be  approached  through  the  medium  of  our  na- 
tional speech,  than  the  rude  Hottentot  or  the  Arab  of  the 
desert.  And  this  is  not  all.  There  are  indeed  hundreds,  and 
thousands  in  Ireland,  who  understand  and  speak  the  English 
tongue  as  well  as  the  Irish  ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  they 
are  as  ready  to  receive  religious  instruction  through  the  one 
as  through  the  other.  The  case  is  just  the  reverse.  I  cannot 
express  to  you  the  attachment,  the  devoted  and  even  roman- 
tic attachment,  which  an  Irish-speaking  peasant  has  for  his 
native  dialect.  It  is  a  chivalrous  attachment,  it  is  even  a 
superstitious  attachment.  He  believes  that  no  heretic  can 
learn  Irish,  and  that  consequently  nothing  but  truth  can  be 
written  or  spoken  in  Irish.  And  thus,  if  you  will  only  take 
advantage  of  his  prejudices,  you  can  at  once  induce  him  to 
receive  and  read  the  Holy  Scriptures.  Give  him  an  English 
Bible,  and  he  will  scarcely  dare  open  it,  because  pronounced 
heretical  by  his  priest.  But  give  him  an  Irish  Bible,  and  no 
menaces  can  induce  its  surrender  ;  the  book  is  in  Irish,  and 
he  knows  therefore  that  it  cannot  contain  heresy.  And  does 
not  this  demonstrate  the  importance  of  employing  the  Irish 


526  ON    THE    EFFECTS    OF    CONSIDERATION. 

language  as  a  vehicle  for  the  communication  of  religious 
instruction  ;  and  does  not  a  Society,  which  is  acting  through 
this  language,  come  before  you  with  special  claims  on  your 
liberal  support? 

I  turn  to  Ireland,  and  I  perceive  that  nature  has  done 
much  for  that  which  poetry  calls  the  emerald  isle  of  the 
ocean.  There  is  fertility  in  her  soil,  and  majesty  in  her 
mountains,  and  luxuriance  in  her  vallies,  and  a  loveliness 
in  her  lakes,  which  makes  them  rivals  to  those  in  which 
Italian  skies  glass  their  deep  azure.  And  the  character  of 
her  children  is  that  of  a  lofty  and  generous  heroism  ;  for  I 
believe  not  that  there  is  a  nation  under  heaven,  possessing 
more  of  the  elements  than  belong  to  the  Irish,  of  what  is 
bold,  and  disinterested,  and  liberal.  And  without  question  it 
is  a  phenomenon,  at  which  we  may  well  be  startled  and 
amazed,  to  behold  Ireland,  in  spite  of  the  advantages  to 
which  I  have  referred,  in  spite  of  her  close  alliance  with 
the  home  and  mistress  of  arts  and  liberty,  torn  by  intestine 
factions,  and  harassed  by  the  feuds  and  commotions  of  her 
tenantry.  Of  such  phenomenon  the  solution  would  be  hope- 
less, if  we  did  not  know  that  Ireland  is  oppressed  by  a  bigoted 
faith,  bestrid  by  that  giant  corrupter  of  Christianity,  who 
knows,  and  acts  on  the  knowledge,  that  to  enlighten  igno- 
rance were  to  overthrow  his  empire.  It  is  because  Ireland 
is  morally  benighted  that  she  is  physically  degraded ;  and 
the  engines  which  must  be  turned  on  her,  to  raise  her  to  her 
due  rank  in  the  scale  of  nations,  are  religious  rather  than 
political ;  she  can  be  thoroughly  civilized  only  by  being 
thoroughly  christianized. 

And  certainly,  if  there  were  ever  a  time  when  it  was  in- 
cumbent upon  protestants  to  labor  at  spreading  the  pure 
Gospel  through  Ireland,  this  is  that  time.  Popery  is  making 
unparalleled  efforts  to  expel  protestantism  altogether.  Shall 
then  the  protestantism  of  England  stand  tamely  by,  as 
though  it  had  no  interest  in  the  struggle?  We  are  persuad- 
ed, on  the  contrary,  that,  as  protestants,  you  will  feel  it  alike 
your  duty,  and  your  privilege,  to  aid  to  the  best  of  your 
ability  institutions  which  provide  a  scriptural  instruction  for 


ON    THE    EFFECTS    OK    CONSIDERATION.  527 

the  peasantry  of  Ireland.  And  whilst  we  gladly  confess  that 
other  societies  have  labored  vigorously  and  successfully  for 
this  great  object,  we  think,  from  the  reasons  already  ad- 
vanced, that  none  employs  a  more  admirable  agency  than 
that  for  which  we  plead ;  and  therefore  are  we  earnest  in 
entreating  for  it  your  liberal  support.  The  Irish  Society  will 
bear  being  considered ;  we  ask  you  to  consider  its  claims, 
and  we  feel  confident  you  will  acknowledge  their  urgency. 
I  cannot  add  more.  I  may  have  already  detained  you  too 
long ;  but  I  know  not  when  I  may  speak  a^ain  in  this  place  ; 
and  I  desire,  ere  I  go,  to  have  proof,  from  your  zeal  for  the 
souls  of  others,  that  you  are  anxious  in  regard  to  your  own 
salvation.  We  must  fear  of  many  amongst  you,  that  they 
hear  sermons,  but  do  not  consider.  Companions  die  around 
them,  but  they  do  not  consider.  They  meet  funerals  as  they 
walk  the  streets,  but  they  do  not  consider.  They  are  warned 
by  sickness  and.  affliction,  but  they  do  not  consider.  They 
feel  that  age  is  creeping  upon  them,  but  they  do  not  consider. 
What  shall  we  say  to  you?  "Will  ye  continue  to  give  cause 
for  the  application  to  yourselves  of  those  touching  words  of 
God  by  his  prophet,  "  The  ox  knoweth  his  owner,  and  the 
ass  his  master's  crib,  but  Israel  doth  not  know,  my  people 
doth  not  consider?"  Preachers  cannot  make  you  consider. 
They  exhort  you,  they  entreat  you,  they  tell  you  of  a  Savior, 
and  of  the  utter  ruin  of  going  on  still  in  your  wickedness. 
But  they  cannot  make  you  consider.  You  must  consider  for 
yourselves  :  you  must,  for  yourselves,  ask  God's  Spirit  to  aid 
you  in  considering.  "Would  that  you  might  consider ;  for 
when  the  trumpet  is  sounding,  and  the  dead  are  stirring,  you 
will  be  forced  to  consider,  though  it  will  be  too  late  for  con- 
sideration to  produce  any  thing  but  unmingied  terror — Oh, 
can  you  tell  me  the  agony  of  being  compelled  to  exclaim  at 
the  judgment,  "  when  I  consider,  I  am  afraid  of  Him  ?" 


18  3  7. 


HER  M  O  N. 


THE    TWO    SONS. 


"  But  what  think  ye.  1  A  certain  man  had  two  sons  ;  and  he  came  to  the 
first,  and  said,  Son,  go  work  to-day  in  my  vineyard.  He  answered 
and  said,  I  will  not ;  but  afterward  he  repented  and  went.  And  he 
came  to  the  second,  and  said  likewise.  And  he  answered  and  said,  I 
go,  Sir,  and  went  not."— St.  Matthew,  21 :  28,  29,  30. 

Our  Savior  had  such  knowledge  of  the  human  heart,  and 
such  power  of  expressing  that  knowledge,  that  he  frequently 
gives  us,  in  one  or  two  bold  outlines,  descriptions  of  great 
classes  into  which  the  world,  or  the  church,  may  be  divided. 
There  is  no  more  remarkable  instance  of  this  than  the  pa- 
rable of  the  sower,  with  which  we  may  suppose  you  all  well 
acquainted.  In  that  parable  Christ  furnishes  descriptions  of 
four  classes  of  the  hearers  of  the  Gospel,  each  description 
being  brief,  and  fetched  from  the  character  of  the  soil  on 
which  the  sower  cast  his  seed.  But  the  singularity  is,  that 
these  four  classes  include  the  whole  mass  of  hearers,  so  that, 
when  combined,  they  make  up  either  the  world  or  the 
church.  You  cannot  imagine  any  fifth  class.  For  in  every 
man  who  is  brought  within  sound  of  the  Gospel,  the  seed 
must  be  as  that  by  the  way-side,  which  is  quickly  carried 
away,  or  as  that  on  shallow  soil  where  the  roots  cannot 
strike,  or  as  that  among  thorns  which  choke  all  the  produce, 


THE    TWO    SONS.  529 

or  finally,  as  that  which,  falling  on  a  well-prepared  place, 
yields  fruit  abundantly.  You  may  try  to  find  hearers  who 
come  not  under  any  one  of  these  descriptions,  but  you  will 
not  succeed  ;  whilst,  on  the  other  hand,  the  world  has  never 
yet  presented  an  assemblage  of  mixed  hearers,  which  might 
not  be  resolved  into  these  four  divisions.  And  we  regard  it  as 
an  extraordinary  evidence  of  the  sagacity,  if  the  expression  be 
lawful,  of  our  Lord,  of  his  superhuman  penetration,  and  of 
his  marvellous  facility  in  condensing  volumes  into  sentences, 
that  he  has  thus  furnished,  in  few  words,  a  sketch  of  the 
whole  world  in  its  every  age,  and  given  us,  within  the  com- 
pass of  a  dozen  lines,  the  moral  history  of  our  race,  as  acted 
on  by  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel. 

We  make  this  reference  to  the  parable  of  the  sower,  be- 
cause we  consider  it  rivalled  in  its  comprehensiveness,  and 
the  unvarying  accuracy  of  its  descriptions,  by  the  portion  of 
Holy  Writ  on  which  we  now  purpose  to  discourse.  We  do 
not  mean  that  the  two  sons  can  represent  the  whole  world, 
or  the  whole  church,  in  the  same  manner  or  degree  as  the 
four  classes  of  hearers.  There  would  manifestly  be  a  con- 
tradiction in  this  :  for  if  there  be  four  parts  into  which  the 
whole  may  be  divided,  it  were  absurd  to  contend  for  the 
equal  propriety  of  a  division  into  two.  But  we  nevertheless 
believe  that  two  very  large  classes  of  persons,  subsisting  in 
every  age  of  the  church,  are  represented  by  the  two  sons, 
and  that,  therefore,  in  delivering  the  parable  before  us,  as 
well  as  that  of  the  sower,  Christ  displayed  his  more  than 
human  acquaintance  with  mankind,  and  his  power  of  deli- 
neating, by  the  simplest  figures,  the  reception  of  his  Gospel 
to  the  very  end  of  time.  All  this,  however,  will  become 
more  evident,  as  we  proceed  with  the  exposition  of  the  pas- 
sage, and  show  you,  as  we  think  to  do,  that  centuries  have 
made  no  difference  in  the  faithfulness  of  the  sketch. 

You  will  observe  that  the  parable,  or  illustration,  or  real 
history — for  it  matters  little  which  term  you  assign  to  this 
portion  of  Scripture — is  introduced  by  our  Lord,  whilst 
holding1  a  discourse  with  the  priests  and  elders  in  the  tem- 
ple. They  had  come  round  him,  demanding  by  what 
67 


o60  THE    TWO    SONS. 

authority  lie  acted — as  though  he  had  not  given  sufficiently 
clear  proof  that  his  mission  was  from  God.  Where  the  de- 
mand was  so  unreasonable,  Jesus  would  not  vouchsafe  a 
direct  answer.  He  therefore  made  his  reply  conditional  on 
their  telling  him  whether  the  baptism  of  John  was  from 
heaven  or  of  men.  He  thus  brought  them  into  a  dilemma 
from  which  no  sophistry  could  extricate  them.  If  they 
allowed  the  divine  character  of  John's  baptism,  they  laid 
themselves  open  to  the  charge  of  gross  inconsistency,  in  not 
having  believed  him,  and  in  denying  the  Messiahshipof  him 
whom  he  heralded.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  they  uttered 
what  they  really  thought,  and  affirmed  John's  baptism  to 
have  been  of  men,  they  felt  that  they  should  excite  the  mul- 
titude against  themselves,  inasmuch  as  the  people  held  the 
Baptist  for  a  prophet.  They  therefore  thought  it  most  prudent 
to  pretend  ignorance,  and  to  declare  themselves  unable  to 
decide  whence  the  baptism  was.  Hence,  the  condition  on 
which  Christ  had  promised  to  answer  their  question  not 
having  been  fulfilled,  they  could  not  press  him  with  any 
further  inquiry,  but  remained  in  the  position  of  disappointed 
and  baffled  antagonists. 

It  consisted  not  however  with  the  Saviors  character,  that 
he  should  content  himself  with  gaining  a  triumph  over  op- 
ponents, as  though  he  had  reasoned  only  for  the  sake  of  dis- 
play. He  had  severely  mortified  his  bitterest  enemies,  by 
turning  their  weapons  against  themselves,  and  bringing 
them  into  a  strait  in  which  they  were  exposed  to  the  con- 
tempt of  the  bystanders.  But  it  was  their  good  which  he 
sought ;  and  when,  therefore,  he  had  silenced  them,  he 
would  not  let  slip  the  opportunity  of  setting  before  them 
their  condition,  and  adding  another  warning  to  the  many 
which  had  been  uttered  in  vain.  The  declaration  of  igno- 
rance in  regard  to  John's  baptism,  suggested  the  course 
which  his  remonstrance  should  take,  according  to  his  well- 
known  custom  of  allowing  the  occasion  to  furnish  the  topic 
of  his  preaching.  He  delivers  the  parable  which  forms  our 
subject  of  discourse,  and  immediately  follows  it  up  by  the 
question,   "  whether   of  them   twain   did   the  will  of  his 


THE    TWO    SONS.  531 

father?"  There  was  no  room  here  for  cither  doubt  or 
evasion.  It  was  so  manifest  that  the  son,  who  had  refused 
at  first,  but  who  had  afterwards  repented  and  gone  to  the 
vineyard,  was  more  obedient  than  the  other,  who  had  made 
a  profession  of  willingness,  but  never  redeemed  his  promise, 
that  even  priests  and  elders  could  not  avoid  giving  a  right 
decision.  And  now  Christ  showed  what  his  motive  had  been 
in  delivering  the  parable,  and  proposing  the  question  ;  for  so 
soon  as  he  had  obtained  their  testimony  in  favor  of  the  first 
son,  he  said  to  them,  "Verily  I  say  unto  you  that  the  publi- 
cans and  the  harlots  go  into  the  kingdom  of  God  before  you." 
We  gather  at  once,  from  this  startling  and  severe  saying, 
that,  by  the  second  son  in  the  parable,  Christ  intended  the 
leading  men  among  the  Jews,  and,  by  the  first,  those  despised 
and  profligate  ranks  with  which  pharisees  and  scribes  would 
not  hold  the  least  intercourse.  The  publicans  and  harlots, 
as  he  goes  on  to  observe,  had  received  John  the  Baptist ;  for 
numbers  had  repented  at  his  preaching.  But  the  priests  and 
elders,  according  to  their  own  confession  just  made,  had  not 
acknowledged  him  as  coming  from  God,  and  had  not  been 
brought  by  him  to  amendment  of  life.  And  this  was  precise- 
ly the  reverse  of  what  the  profession  of  the  several  parties 
had  given  right  to  expect.  The  priests  and  elders,  making  a 
great  show  of  religion,  and  apparently  eager  expectants  of 
the  promised  Messiah,  seemed  only  to  require  to  be  directed 
to  the  vineyard,  and  they  would  immediately  and  cheerfully 
go.  On  the  other  hand,  the  publicans  and  harlots,  persons  of 
grossly  immoral  and  profligate  habits,  might  be  said  to  de- 
clare, by  their  lives,  an  obstinate  resolve  to  continue  in  dis- 
obedience, so  that,  if  told  to  go  work  in  the  vineyard,  their 
answer  would  be  a  contemptuous  refusal.  Yet  when  the 
matter  came  to  be  put  to  the  proof,  the  result  was  widely 
different  from  what  appearances  had  promised.  The  great 
men  amongst  the  Jews,  whose  whole  profession  was  that  of 
parties  waiting  to  know,  that  they  might  perform,  God's  will, 
were  bidden  by  the  Baptist  to  receive  Jesus  as  their  Savior ; 
but,  notwithstanding  all  their  promises,  they  treated  him  as 
a  deceiver,  and  would  not  join  themselves  to  his  disciples. 


532  THE    TWO    SONS. 

The  same  message  was  delivered  to  the  publicans  and  har- 
lots ;  but  these,  whatever  the  reluctance  which  they  mani- 
fested at  first,  came  in  crowds  to  hear  Jesus,  and  took  by- 
force  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  And  all  this  was  aptly  illus- 
trated by  the  parable  before  us.  The  great  men  were  the  se- 
cond son  ;  for  they  had  said,  "  I  go,  sir,"  and  yet  they  went 
not :  the  publicans  and  harlots  were  the  first  son  ;  for  though, 
when  bidden,  they  refused,  yet  afterwards  they  repented 
and  went. 

Such  was  evidently  the  import  and  design  of  the  parable, 
as  originally  delivered  by  Jesus.  It  is  possible  indeed  that 
there  may  have  been  also  a  reference  to  the  Jew  and  the 
Gentile ;  the  two  sons  representing,  as  they  elsewhere  do, 
these  two  great  divisions  of  mankind.  The  Jews,  as  a  nation, 
were  aptly  figured  by  the  second  son,  the  Gentiles  by  the 
first.  Both  had  the  same  father — seeing  that,  however  close 
the  union  between  God  and  the  Jews,  and  however  the  Gen- 
tiles had  been  left,  for  centuries,  to  themselves,  there  was  no 
difference  in  origin,  inasmuch  as  the  whole  race  had  the 
same  Lord  for  its  parent.  And  the  Jews  stood  ready  to  wel- 
come their  Messiah ;  whereas  little  could  be  expected  from 
the  Gentiles,  sunk  as  they  were  in  ignorance  and  supersti- 
tion, but  that,  if  directed  to  a  Savior,  they  would  treat  with 
contempt  the  free  offer  of  life.  Here  again  however  the  event 
was  the  reverse  of  the  expectation.  The  Gospel  made  little 
way  amongst  the  Jews,  where  there  had  been  every  promise 
of  a  cordial  reception  ;  but  rapidly  overran  the  Gentile  world, 
where  there  had  seemed  least  likelihood  of  its  gaining  any 
ground.  So  that  once  more  the  parable,  if  taken  in  the  light 
of  a  prophecy,  was  accurately  fulfilled.  The  Jew,  as  the  se- 
cond son,  had  promised  to  go  and  work  in  the  vineyard,  and 
then  never  went :  the  Gentile,  as  the  first  son,  had  perempto- 
rily refused,  but  afterwards  saw  his  error,  and  repented,  and 
obeyed. 

But  whilst  there  may  be  great  justice  in  thus  giving  the 
parable  a  national,  or  temporary  application,  our  chief  busi- 
ness is  to  treat  it,  according  to  our  introductory  remarks,  as 
descriptive  of  two  classes  in  every  age  of  the  church.    It  is 


THE    TWO    SONS. 


this  which  we  shall  now  proceed  to  do,  believing  that  it  fur- 
nishes, in  a  more  than  common  degree,  the  material  of  inte- 
resting and  instructive  discourse. 

Now  it  is  a  very  frequent  image  in  Scripture,  that  which 
represents  the  Church  of  Christ  as  a  vineyard,  and  ourselves 
as  laborers  who  have  been  hired  to  work  in  that  vineyard. 
We  shall  not,  on  the  present  occasion,  enlarge  on  this  image, 
nor  take  pains  to  show  you  its  beauty  and  fidelity.  We  shall 
find  enough  to  engage  us  in  the  other  parts  of  the  parable, 
and  may  therefore  assume  what  you  are  probably  all  pre- 
pared to  admit.  We  go  then  at  once  to  the  message  which  is 
delivered  to  each  of  the  sons,  "  Son,  go  work  to-day  in  my 
vineyard."  It  is  precisely  the  message,  which,  Sabbath  after 
Sabbath,  is  uttered  in  Cod's  name  by  the  ordained  ministers 
of  Christ.  We  are  never  at  liberty  to  make  you  any  offers 
for  to-morrow,  but  must  always  tell  you,  that,  "  if  to-day  you 
will  hear  his  voice,"  he  is  ready  to  receive  you  into  the  vine- 
yard of  his  church.  And  it  is  not  to  a  life  of  inactivity  and 
idleness  that  we  are  bidden  to  summon  you,  not  to  that  inert 
dependence  on  the  merits  of  another  which  shall  exclude 
all  necessity  for  personal  striving.  We  call  you,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  work  in  the  vineyard.  If  you  think  to  be  saved 
without  labor  ;  if  you  imagine,  that,  because  Christ  has  done 
all  that  is  necessary  in  the  way  of  merit,  there  remains 
nothing  to  be  done  by  yourselves  in  the  way  of  condition, 
you  are  yielding  to  a  delusion  which  must  be  as  wilful  as  it 
will  be  fatal — the  whole  tenor  of  Scripture  unreservedly  de- 
claring, that,  if  you  would  enter  into  life,  you  must  "  work 
out  your  salvation  with  fear  and  trembling."  And  thus  the 
message,  "  Son,  go,  work  to-day  in  my  vineyard,"  is  in  every 
respect  that  which  God  is  continually  addressing  to  you 
through  the  mouth  of  his  ministering  servants,  a  message 
declaratory  that  "  now  is  the  accepted  time,"  and  requiring 
you  to  put  forth  every  energy  that  you  may  escape  "  the 
wrath  to  come." 

And  now  the  question  is,  as  to  the  reception  with  which 
this  message  meets;  and  whether  there  be  not  two  great 
classes  of  its  hearers  who  are  accurately  represented  by  the 


534  THE    TWO    SONS. 

two  sons  in  the  parable.  We  do  not  pretend  to  affirm,  as  we 
have  already  intimated,  that  the  whole  mass  of  unconverted 
men  may  fairly  be  resolved  under  the  two  divisions  thus 
figuratively  drawn.  We  are  well  aware  of  the  prevalence  of 
an  indifference  and  apathy,  which  can  hardly  be  roused  to 
any  kind  of  answer,  either  to  a  specious  promise,  made  only 
to  be  broken,  or  to  a  harsh  refusal  which  may  perhaps  be 
turned  into  compliance.  But  without  pretending;  to  include 
all  under  these  divisions,  we  may  and  do  believe  that  the 
multitude  is  very  large  which  may  be  thus  defined  and 
classified.  We  suppose,  that,  after  all,  most  way  is  made  by 
the  preachers  of  the  Gospel  when  there  seems  least  prospect 
of  success  ;  and  that,  as  it  was  in  the  days  when  Christ  was 
on  earth,  those  who  promise  fairest  give  most  disappoint- 
ment, whilst  the  harvest  is  reaped  where  we  looked  only  for 
sterility.  This  however  is  a  matter  which  should  be  care- 
fully examined,  and  we  shall  therefore  employ  the  remain- 
der of  our  discourse  in  considering  separately  the  cases  of 
the  two  sons,  beginning  with  that  of  the  second,  who  said, 
"  I  go,  sir,  and  went  not,"  and  then  proceeding  to  that  of 
the  first,  who  said,  "  I  will  not,  but  afterward  he  repented, 
and  went." 

Now  there  is  in  many  men  a  warmth  of  natural  feeling, 
and  a  great  susceptibility,  which  make  them  promising  sub- 
jects for  any  stirring  and  touching  appeal.  They  are  easily 
excited  :  and  both  their  fears  and  sympathies  will  readily 
answer  to  a  powerful  address,  or  a  sorrowful  narrative. 
They  are  not  made  of  that  harsh  stuff  which  seems  the  pre- 
dominant element  in  many  men's  constitutions ;  but,  on  the 
contrary,  are  yielding  and  malleable,  as  though  the  moral 
artificer  might  work  them,  without  difficulty,  into  what 
shape  he  would.  We  are  well  convinced  that  there  are 
many  who  answer  this  description  in  every  congregation, 
and  therefore  in  the  present.  It  is  far  from  our  feeling,  that, 
when  we  put  forth  all  our  earnestness  in  some  appeal  to  the 
conscience,  or  come  down  upon  you  with  our  warmest  en- 
treaty, that  you  would  accept  the  deliverance  proposed  by 
the  Gospel,  we  are  heard  on  all  sides  with  coldness  and  in- 


THE    TWO    SONS.  535 

difference.  We  have  quite  the  opposite  feeling.  We  do  not 
doubt,  that,  as  the  appeal  goes  forward,  and  the  entreaty  is 
pressed,  there  are  some  who  are  conscious  of  a  warmth  of 
sentiment,  and  a  melting  of  heart ;  and  in  whom  there  is 
excited  so  much  of  a  determination  to  forsake  sin,  and  obey 
God,  that,  if  we  could  ply  each  with  the  command,  "go, 
work  to-day  in  my  vineyard,"  we  should  receive  a  promise 
of  immediate  compliance. 

It  is  not  that  these  men  or  these  women  are  undergoing  a 
change  of  heart,  though  there  may  be  that  in  the  feelings 
thus  excited,  which,  fairly  followed  out,  would  lead  to  a 
thorough  renovation.  It  is  only  that  they  are  made  of  a  ma- 
terial on  which  it  is  very  easy  to  work ;  but  which,  alas,  if 
it  have  great  facility  in  receiving  impressions,  may  have  just 
as  much  in  allowing  them  to  be  effaced.  And  what  is  done 
by  a  faithful  sermon  is  done  also  by  providential  dispensa- 
tions, when  God  addresses  these  parties  through  some  af- 
fliction or  bereavement.  If  you  visit  them,  when  death  has 
entered  their  households,  you  find  nothing  of  the  harshness 
and  reserve  of  sullen  grief;  but  all  that  openness  to  counsel, 
and  all  that  readiness  to  own  the  mercy  of  the  judgment 
which  seem  indicative  of  such  a  softening  of  the  heart  as 
promises  to  issue  in  its  genuine  conversion.  If  you  treat  the 
chastisement  under  which  they  labor  as  a  message  from 
God,  and  translate  it  thus  into  common  language,  "  Son,  go 
work  to-day  in  my  vineyard,"  you  meet  with  no  signs  "of 
dislike  or  reluctance,  but  rather  with  a  ready  assent  that 
you  give  the  true  meaning,  and  with  a  frank  resolution  that 
God  shall  not  speak  in  vain. 

We  put  it  to  yourselves  to  determine  whether  we  are  not 
describing  a  common  case  ;  whether,  if  you  could  dissect 
our  congregations,  you  would  not  find  a  large  mass  of  per- 
sons who  seem  quite  accessible  to  moral  attack  ;  whom  you 
may  easily  startle  by  a  close  address  to  the  conscience,  or 
overcome  by  a  pathetic  and  plaintive  description  ;  and  on 
whom  when  affliction  falls,  it  falls  with  that  subduing  and 
penetrating  power  which  gives  room  for  hope  that  it  will 
bring  them  to  repentance.     And  wheresoever  these  cases 


536  THE    TWO    SONS, 

occur,  they  may  evidently,  so  far  as  we  have  gone,  be  identi- 
fied with  that  of  the  second  son  in  the  parable  ;  for  whilst 
the  address  to  the  parties  is  one  which  urges  to  the  working 
in  the  vineyard,  their  answer  has  all  the  promise,  and  all  the 
respectfulness,  contained  in  the  "  I  go,  sir,"  of  our  text. 

But  the  accuracy  of  the  delineation  does  not  end  here. 
We  must  follow  these  excited  listeners  from  the  place  of  as- 
sembling, and  these  subdued  mourners  from  the  scene  of 
affliction.  Alas,  how  soon  is  it  apparent  that  what  is  easily 
roused  may  be  as  easily  lulled ;  and  that  you  have  only  to 
remove  the  incumbent  weight,  and  the  former  figure  is 
regained.  The  men  who  have  been  all  attention  to  the 
preacher,  whom  he  seemed  to  have  brought  completely 
under  command,  so  that  they  were  ready  to  follow  him 
whithersoever  he  would  lead,  settle  back  into  their  listless- 
ness  when  the  stimulant  of  the  sermon  is  withdrawn  ;  and 
those,  whom  the  fires  of  calamity  appeared  to  have  melted, 
harden  rapidly  into  their  old  constitution  when  time  has 
somewhat  damped  the  intenseness  of  the  flame.  The  melan- 
choly truth  is,  that  the  whole  assault  has  been  on  their  natural 
sensibilities,  on  their  animal  feelings ;  and  that  nothing  like 
spiritual  solicitude  has  been  produced,  whether  by  the  sermon 
or  the  sorrow.  They  have  given  much  cause  for  hope,  seeing 
they  have  displayed  susceptibility,  and  thus  shown  themselves 
capable  of  moral  impressions.  But  they  have  disappointed 
expectation,  because  they  have  taken  no  pains  to  distinguish 
between  an  instinct  of  nature  and  a  work  of  God's  Spirit, 
or  rather,  because  they  have  allowed  their  feelings  to  evapo- 
rate, in  the  forming  a  resolution,  and  have  not  set  themselves 
prayerfully  to  the  carrying  it  into  effect.  And  thus  it  comes 
to  pass  that  men,  on  whom  preaching  seemed  to  have  taken 
great  hold,  as  though  they  were  moved  by  the  terrors,  and 
animated  by  the  hopes  of  Christianity  ;  or  whom  the  visita- 
tions of  Providence  appeared  to  have  brought  to  humility 
and  contrition;  make  no  advances  in  the  religion  of  the 
heart,  but  falsify  the  hopes  which  those  who  wish  their  sal- 
vation have  ventured  to  cherish.  And  when  surprise  is  ex- 
pressed, and  the  reason  is  demanded,  the  only  reply  is,  that 


THE    TWO    SONS.  537 

that  there  is  yet  a  large  class  in  the  world,  too  faithfully 
delineated  by  the  second  son,  who,  when  bidden  by  his  fa- 
ther to  go  work  in  the  vineyard,  answered, "  I  go,  sir,"  and 
went  not. 

Yon  may  think,  however,  that  we  have  not  adduced  pre- 
cisely the  case  intended  by  the  parable,  inasmuch  as  these 
susceptible,  but  unstable,  persons  are  not  of  the  same  class 
with  the  chief  priests  and  elders.  The  second  son  was  ori- 
ginally designed  to  denote  the  leading  men  among  the  Jews ; 
and,  therefore,  in  seeking  his  present  representatives,  we 
seem  bound  to  look  for  similarity  to  those  to  whom  Christ 
addressed  the  parable.  This  is  so  far  true,  that,  although  it 
impeaches  not  the  accuracy  of  what  has  been  advanced,  it 
makes  it  necessary  for  us  to  continue  our  examination,  lest 
we  bring  within  too  narrow  limits  the  class  of  men  described. 

We  have  already  hinted  that  there  lie  the  greatest  ob- 
stacles to  the  reception  of  the  Gospel,  where,  at  first,  we 
might  have  hoped  for  most  rapid  success.  Thus  with  the 
chief  priests  and  Pharisees.  There  was  the  most  rigid  at- 
tention to  all  the  externals  of  religion,  a  professed  readiness 
to  submit  to  the  revealed  will  of  God,  and  tin  apparent  de- 
termination to  receive  Christ,  so  soon  as  he  should  be  mani- 
fested. Yet  all  this,  as  we  have  shown  you,  was  nothing 
more  than  the  saying,  "  I  go,  sir ;"  for  when  Christ  ac- 
tually came,  they  were  displeased  at  his  lowliness,  and  would 
not  join  him  as  their  King  and  their  Savior.  And  we  are 
bound  to  say  that  we  know  not  more  unpromising  subjects 
for  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel,  than  those,  who  are  puncti- 
liously attentive  to  the  forms  of  religion,  and  who  attach  a 
worth  and  a  merit  to  their  careful  performance  of  certain 
moral  duties.  We  cannot  have  a  more  unpalatable  truth  to 
deliver — but  wo  is  unto  us  if  we  dare  to  keep  it  back — than 
that  which  exposes  the  utter  insufficiency  of  the  best  human 
righteousness,  and  which  tells  men,  who  are  amiable  and 
charitable,  and  moral  and  upright,  that,  with  all  their  excel- 
lencies, they  may  be  further  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
than  the  dissolute  whom  they  regard  with  absolute  loathing. 
The  immediate  feeling  is,  that  we  confound  virtue  and  vice  ; 
68 


538  THK    TWO    SONS. 

and  that,  allowing  no  superiority  to  what  is  lovely  and  oi 
good  report,  we  represent  God  as  indifferent  to  moral  con- 
duct, and  thus  undermine  the  foundations  on  which  society 
rests.  But  we  are  open  to  no  such  charge.  We  are  quite 
alive  to  the  beauty  and  advantageousness  of  that  moral  ex- 
cellence which  does  not  spring  from  a  principle  of  religion, 
nay,  which  may  even  oppose  the  admission  of  the  peculiar 
doctrines  of  Christianity.  There  is  not  a  man  for  whom  we 
have  a  greater  feeling  of  interest,  because  there  is  not  one  of 
whom  naturally  we  have  a  greater  admiration,  than  for  him 
who  is  passing  through  life  with  an  unblemished  reputation, 
sedulously  attentive  to  all  the  relative  duties,  and  taking  ge- 
nerously the  lead  in  efforts  to  ameliorate  the  condition  of  his 
fellows,  but  who,  all  the  while,  has  no  consciousness  of  his 
own  sinfulness,  and  who  therefore  rests  on  his  own  works, 
and  not  on  Christ's  merits.  If  you  compare  this  man  with  a 
dissolute  character,  one  who  is  outraging  the  laws  of  society 
and  the  feelings  of  humanity ;  and  if  you  judge  the  two 
merely  with  reference  to  the  present  scene  of  being  ;  why, 
there  is  the  widest  possible  difference  ;  and  to  speak  of  the 
one  as  equally  depraved,  and  equally  vile,  with  the  other, 
Avould  be  an  overcharged  statement,  carrying  its  own 
confutation. 

But  what  is  there  to  prove  that  there  may  not  be  just  as 
much  rebellion  against  God  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other  • 
and  that  the  man  whose  whole  deportment  is  marked  by 
what  is  praiseworthy  and  beneficial,  may  not  be  as  void  of 
all  love  towards  the  Author  of  his  being,  as  he  who,  by  his 
vices  and  villany,  draws  upon  himself  the  execrations  of  a 
neighborhood  ?  Try  men  as  members  of  society,  and  they 
are  as  widely  separated  as  the  poles  of  the  earth.  But  try 
them  as  God's  creatures,  not  their  own,  but  "  bought  with  a 
price,"  and  you  may  bring  them  to  the  same  level,  or  even 
prove  the  moral  and  amiable  further  alienated  than  the  dis- 
solute and  repulsive.  Yes,  further  alienated.  It  is  a  hard 
saying,  but  we  cannot  pare  it  away.  These  upright  and 
charitable  men,  on  whom  a  world  is  lavishing  its  applause, 
how  will  they  receive  us,  when  we  come  and  tell  them  that 


THE    TWO    SONS.  539 

they  are  sinners,  who  have  earned  for  themselves  eternal 
destruction  ;  and  that  they  are  no  more  secured  against  the 
ruin  by  their  rectitude  and  philanthropy,  than  if  they  were 
the  slaves  of  every  vice,  and  the  patrons  of  every  crime  ? 
May  we  not  speak  of,  at  least,  a  high  probability,  that  they 
will  be  disgusted  at  a  statement  which  makes  so  light  of 
their  excellence  ;  and  that  they  will  turn  away  from  the 
doctrines  of  the  Gospel,  as  too  humiliating  to  be  true,  or  as 
only  constructed  for  the  very  refuse,  of  mankind  ? 

Oh,  we  again  say  that  we  hardly  know  a  more  hopeless 
task  than  that  of  bringing  the  Gospel  to  bear  on  an  indivi- 
dual who  is  trenched  about  with  self-righteousness.  If  we 
are  dealing  with  the  openly  immoral  man,  we  can  take  the 
thunders  of  the  law,  and  batter  at  his  conscience.  We  know 
well  enough,  that,  in  his  case,  there  is  a  voice  within  which 
answers  to  the  voice  from  without ;  and  that,  however  he 
may  harden  himself  against  our  remonstrance,  there  is,  at 
least,  no  sophistry  by  which  he  can  persuade  himself  that 
he  is  not  a  sinner.  This  is  a  great  point  secured  :  we  occupy 
a  vantage-ground,  from  which  we  may  direct,  with  full 
power,  all  our  moral  artillery.  But  when  we  deal  with  the 
man  who  is  amiable,  and  estimable,  and  exemplary,  but  who, 
nevertheless,  is  a  stranger  to  the  motives  of  the  Gospel,  our 
very  first  assertion— for  this  must  be  our  first ;  we  cannot 
advance  a  step  till  this  preliminary  is  felt  and  conceded— 
the  assertion,  that  the  man  is  a  sinner,  deserving  only  hell, 
arms  against  us  his  every  antipathy,  and  is  almost  certain  to 
call  up  such  a  might  of  opposition,  that  we  are  at  once  re- 
pulsed as  unworthy  further  hearing. 

And  how  agrees  this  too  frequent  case  with  the  sketching 
of  our  parable?  We  look  upon  men,  whose  virtues  make 
them  the  ornaments  of  society,  and  whose  zealous  attention 
to  the  various  duties  of  life  deservedly  secures  them  respect 
and  esteem.  You  would  gather  from  their  deportment,  from 
their  apparent  readiness  to  discharge  faithfully  every  known 
obligation,  that  the  setting  before  them  what  God  requires  at 
their  hands  would  suffice  to  secure  their  unwearied  obe- 
dience.   If  you  say  to  them,  in  the  name  of  the  Almighty, 


540  THE    TWO    SON'S. 

"  Son,  go  work  to-day  in  my  vineyard,"  their  answer,  as  fur- 
nished by  all  that  seeming  desire  to  act  rightly  which  has 
forced  itself  on  your  attention,  is  one  of  sincere  and  hearty 
compliance.  But  so  soon  as  they  come  to  know  what  work- 
ing in  the  vineyard  means,  alas,  it  is  with  them  as  it  was 
with  the  pharisees  and  scribes,  who,  with  every  profession 
that  they  waited  for  Messiah,  no  sooner  saw  him  "  without 
form  or  comeliness,"  than  they  scornfully  refused  to  give 
him  their  allegiance.  These  self-righteous  men  are  ready 
enough  to  work,  because  it  is  by  works  of  their  own  that 
they  think  to  gain  heaven.  But  when  they  find  that  their 
great  work  is  to  be  the  renouncing  their  own  works,  and 
that  the  vineyard,  in  which  you  invite  them  to  labor,  is  one 
in  which  man's  chief  toil  is  to  humble  himself,  that  Christ 
may  be  exalted — this  gives  the  matter  altogether  a  new  as- 
pect; they  would  labor  at  building  the  tower  of  Babel,  but 
they  have  no  idea  of  laboring  at  pulling  it  down. 

And  thus  does  it  come  to  pass,  that  the  ministers  of  the 
Gospel  are  repulsed  with  a  more  than  common  vehemence  ; 
and  that  their  message  is  thrown  back,  as  though  the  deli- 
vering it  had  been  an  insult.  We  can  but  mourn  over  men, 
who,  with  every  thing  to  recommend  them  to  their  fellows, 
honorable  in  their  dealings,  large  in  their  charities,  true  in 
their  friendships,  are  yet  dishonest  to  themselves  and  false  to 
their  God — dishonest  to  themselves,  for  they  put  a  cheat  on 
their  souls  ;  false  to  their  God,  for  they  give  him  not  what  he 
asks,  and  all  else  is  worse  than  nothing.  Yes,  we  could  la- 
ment, with  a  deeper  than  the  ordinary  lamentation  which 
should  be  poured  over  every  lost  soul,  when  integrity  and 
generosity,  and  patriotism  and  disinterestedness,  all  beauti- 
ful and  splendid  things,  have  only  helped  to  confirm  men  in 
rejection  of  the  Gospel,  and  have  strengthened  that  dislike 
to  the  peculiar  doctrines  of  Christianity,  which  is  natural  to 
the  heart,  but  which  must  be  expelled,  else  we  perish.  And 
when  we  are  asked  whether  it  can  indeed  be,  that  men,  so 
amiable  and  admirable,  who  have  a  yearning  heart  for  every 
tale  of  sorrow,  and  an  open  hand  for  every  case  of  destitu- 
tion, and  an  instinctive  aversion  to  whatever  is  mean  and 


THE    TWO    SONS.  Ml 

degrading,  are  treading  the  downward  path  which  leads  to 
the  chambers  of  everlasting  death,  we  can  only  say  that  the 
very  qualities  which  seem  to  yon  to  mark  a  fitness  for  hea- 
ven, have  prevented  the  passage  through  that  strait  gate  of 
the  vineyard,  which  is  wide  enough  for  every  sinner,  but 
too  narrow  for  any  sin  ;  and  that  thus  has  been  paralleled 
the  whole  case  of  the  second  son,  who  said  to  his  father,  "  I 
go,  sir,"  and  went  not. 

And  now  we  must  have  said  enough  to  convince  you  that 
the  delineation  of  our  parable  is  not  local  or  temporary,  but 
may  justly  be  extended  to  all  ages  of  the  church.  We  make 
this  assertion,  because  though,  as  yet,  we  have  only  examined 
the  case  of  one  son,  our  remarks  have  had  an  indirect  bear- 
ing on  that  of  the  other.  We  have  shown  you  that  the  ob- 
stacles to  the  reception  of  the  truths  of  the  Gospel  are  often 
greatest  where  appearances  seem  to  augur  the  readiest  wel- 
come. Where  the  promise  is  most  freely  given,  how  fre- 
quently is  the  performance  withheld.  And  though  the  con- 
verse of  this  may  not  be  necessarily  true,  namely,  that,  where 
we  have  refusal  at  first,  we  may  expect  ultimate  compliance, 
yet,  undoubtedly  the  case  of  the  second  son  prepares  us  to 
feel  no  surprise  at  that  of  the  first.  If  there  be  final  refusal, 
where  there  is  most  of  present  consent,  it  can  be  no  ways 
strange  that  there  should  be  final  consent,  where  there  is 
most  of  present  refusal. 

This  it  is  which  is  represented  to  us  in  the  instance  of  the 
first  son.  His  father  came  to  him,  and  said,  "Son,  go  work 
to-day  in  my  vineyard."  "He  answered  and  said,  I  will 
not;  but  afterward  he  repented  and  went."  There  could  be 
nothing  more  discourteous,  as  well  as  nothing  more  peremp- 
tory, than  the  reply.  He  addresses  his  father  with  nothing 
of  that  respectful  language  which  the  second  son  used,  and 
which  miijht  at  least  have  softened  the  refusal.  There  is  a 
harshness  and  bluntness  in  the  answer,  which,  indepen- 
dently of  the  disobedience,  proved  him  of  a  churlish  and 
unmanageable  temper.  And  we  know,  from  the  application 
which  Christ  himself  made  of  the  parable,  that  this  first  son 
is  the  representative  of  those  more  depraved  and  profligate 


542  THE    TWO    SONS- 

characters,  who  make  no  profession  of  religion,  but  treat  it 
with  open  contempt.  There  are  many  who  will  even  go  the 
length  of  boldly  proclaiming  their  resolve  to  live  "  without 
God  in  the  world,"  who  glory  in  their  shame ;  and  who 
think  it  for  their  credit,  as  marking  a  free  and  unshackled 
spirit,  that  they  have  got  rid  of  the  restraints  which  the 
dread  of  future  punishment  imposes.  Others  again,  who 
have  not  hardened  themselves  to  this  desperate  degree,  seem 
yet  wholly  inaccessible  to  warning  and  reproof;  for  they 
have,  at  least,  persuaded  themselves  that  they  shall  have  a 
long  lease  of  life,  and  that  it  will  be  soon  enough  at  the 
eleventh  hour  to  go  and  work  in  the  vineyard.  And  in  all 
such  cases,  whether  we  meet  with  the  contemptuousness  of 
unblushing  immorality,  or  the  coldness  of  determined  indif- 
ference, we  have  the  unqualified  refusal  which  the  first  son 
gave  his  father — sometimes  in  a  harsher,  and  at  other  times 
in  a  milder  tone — but  always  the  "I  will  not,"  which  seems 
to  preclude  all  hope  of  obedience. 

These  are  the  cases  which  seem  most  calculated  to  dispirit 
a  minister ;  for  it  is  even  more  disheartening  to  find  that  he 
makes  no  impression,  than  that,  where  it  has  been  made,  it 
has  been  quickly  effaced.  It  is  manifestly  only  the  treache- 
rous nature  of  the  surface,  which  is  in  fault  in  the  latter 
case  ;  but,  in  the  former,  he  may  fear  that  much  of  the 
blame  is  chargeable  on  his  own  want  of  energy  in  wielding 
his  weapons.  He  may  even,  in  moments  of  despondency,  be 
wrought  into  a  suspicion  that  these  weapons  are  not  as 
mighty  as  he  had  been  instructed  to  believe.  And  therefore 
it  is  a  marvellously  cheering  thing,  to  be  told  of  the  first  son, 
that,  "  afterward  he  repented  and  went."  We  do  not  believe 
that  the  precious  seed  of  the  word  is  all  lost,  because  there 
is  no  immediate  harvest.  We  remember  that  great  principle 
in  God's  dealings,  which  is  announced  by  St.  Paul,  "  That 
which  thou  sowest  is  not  quickened,  except  it  first  die."  It 
is  often,  we  are  persuaded,  in  spiritual  things,  as  it  is  always 
in  natural — the  grain  is  long  buried,  and,  to  all  appearance, 
lost;  but  then  suddenly  come  the  signs  of  vegetation,  and 
the  soil  is  pierced  by  the  fresh  green  blade. 


THE    TWO    SONS.  513 

We  now  address  ourselves  to  those  amongst  you  who  have 
never  entered  the  vineyard,  who  have  never  broken  up  the 
fallow  ground,  and  sown  to  themselves  in  righteousness. 
We  know  not  whether  the  number  who  fall  under  this  de- 
scription be  great  or  small ;  nor  whether  it  be  mainly  com- 
posed of  those  living  in  open  sin,  or  of  those  who  are  only 
indifferent  to  the  high  claims  of  religion.  But  we  say  to 
these  men,  and  these  women,  go,  work  to-day  in  the  vine- 
yard. We  call  upon  them,  and  entreat  them,  that,  whilst 
God  yet  strives  with  them  by  his  Spirit,  and  the  free  offer  of 
salvation  is  made  them  in  his  name,  they  would  consider 
their  ways,  and  turn  unto  the  Lord,  lest  the  evil  day  come 
upon  them  ':  as  a  thief."  We  anticipate  what  will  be  practi- 
cally their  answer.  There  may  indeed  be  a  solitary  excep- 
tion. Even  now  may  there  be  the  casting  down  of  some 
strong-hold  of  unbelief;  and  there  may  be  one  in  this  as- 
sembly, in  whom  our  word  is  working  energetically,  con- 
vincing him  of  sin,  and  persuading  him  to  make  trial  of 
Christ's  power  to  save.  But  from  the  mass  of  those  whom 
the  first  son  represents,  we  can  look  for  nothing  but  his  an- 
swer ;  and  if  we  could  single  out  the  individuals,  and  bid 
them  to  the  vineyard,  "  I  will  not"  would  be  but  too  faithful 
an  account  of  their  reply.  And  yet  we  do  not  necessarily 
conclude  that  we  have  labored  in  vain.  Oh  no,  far  enough 
from  this.  The  word,  which  we  have  spoken,  may  in  many 
cases  have  gained  a  lodgment,  though  long  years  may  elapse 
ere  it  put  forth  its  vigor.  If  we  could  follow,  through  the 
remainder  of  their  lives,  those  with  whom  we  now  seem  to 
plead  wholly  in  vain,  we  can  feel  that  we  should  find  a  day 
breaking  upon  some  of  them,  full  of  the  memory  of  this  very 
hour  and  this  very  sermon  ;  and  perceive  that  one  cause  or 
another  had  suddenly  acted  on  the  seed  now  sown,  so  that 
what  we  supposed  dead  was  rapidly  germinating.  It  is  mar- 
vellous how  often,  in  sickness  or  in  sorrow,  there  will  rush 
into  the  mind  some  long-forgotten  text,  some  sentence,  which 
was  little  heeded  when  first  heard,  but  which  settled  itself 
down  in  the  inner  man,  to  wait  a  time  when,  like  the  cha- 
racters which  a  mysterious  hand  traced  before  the  Assyrian 


544  THE    TWO    SONS'. 

in  his  revels,  it  might  flash  dismay  through  every  chamber 
of  the  spirit.  The  father's  bidding,  "  go  work  to-day  in  my 
vineyard,"  will  rise  into  remembrance  with  a  sudden  and 
overcoming  energy  ;  it  may  not  have  been  heard  for  years, 
it  may  not  have  been  thought  of  for  years  ;  but  when  the 
man  is  brought  low,  and  health  is  failing  him,  and  friends 
are  forsaking  him,  he  will  seem  to  hear  it,  not  less  distinctly, 
and  far  more  thrillingly,  articulated,  than  when  it  fell  disre- 
garded from  the  lips  of  the  preacher  ;  and  he  will  wonder  at 
his  own  perverseness,  and  weep  over  his  infatuation. 

We  are  sketching  to  you  no  imaginary  case,  but  one  which 
all,  who  have  opportunities  of  reading  men's  spiritual  histo- 
ries, will  tell  you  is  of  frequent  occurrence.  The  son  who 
harshly  says,  "  I  will  not,"  remembers  the  command  and 
the  refusal  on  some  long  after  day,  repents  of  his  sinfulness, 
and  hastens  to  the  vineyard.  The  pathetic  remonstrance  of 
a  parent  with  a  dissolute  child  is  not  necessarily  thrown 
away,  because  that  child  persists  in  his  dissoluteness :  it  may 
come  up,  with  all  the  touching  tones  of  the  well  remember 
ed  voice,  when  the  parent  has  long  lain  in  the  grave,  and 
work  remorse  and  contrition  in  the  prodigal.  The  bold  ad- 
dress of  the  minister  to  some  slave  of  sensuality  is  not  ne- 
cessarily ineffectual,  because  its  object  departs  unmoved 
and  unchanged,  and  breaks  not  away  from  the  base  thral- 
dom in  which  he  is  held.  That  address  may  ring  in  his 
ears,  as  though  unearthly  voices  syllabled  its  words,  when 
the  minister's  tongue  has  long  been  mute.  "  He,  being  dead, 
yet  speaketh,"  are  words  which  experience  marvellously  ve- 
rifies in  regard  of  those  whose  office  it  is  to  rebuke  vice  and 
animate  to  righteousness.  They  may  be  verified  in  the  in- 
stance of  some  one  who  now  hears  me.  I  feel  so  encouraged 
by  the  account  of  the  first  son,  that  I  could  even  dare  to  pro- 
phesy the  history  of  one  or  more  in  this  assembly.  There 
may  be  some  to  whom  I  never  before  preached  the  Gospel, 
and  to  whom  I  may  never  preach  it  again.  I  speak  in  igno- 
rance. I  know  not  how  far  this  may  be  true  on  the  present 
occasion.  But  I  can  imagine,  that,  in  the  throng  which  sur- 
rounds me,  there  is  one  to  whom  I  speak  for  the  first  time, 


I  II K    TWO    SON: 


545 


and  who  will  never  see  me  again  till  we  meet  at  the  judg- 
ment-seat of  Christ.  He  may  be  in  the  vigor  of  his  youth, 
life  opening  attractively  before  him,  and  the  world  wearing 
all  that  freshness  and  fairness  with  which  it  beguiles  the  un- 
wary. And  he  will  have  no  ear  for  the  summonses  of  reli- 
gion. It  is  in  the  name  of  the  God  of  the  whole  earth  that  I 
conjure  him  to  mortify  the  flesh,  and  fasten  his  affections  on 
things  above.  It  is  by  his  own  majesty,  his  own  dignity,  as 
an  immortal  being,  that  I  would  stir  him  to  the  abandoning 
all  low  pursuits,  and  engaging  in  the  sublime  duties  of 
righteousness.  But  he  will  not  be  persuaded.  He  has  made 
his  election  :  and,  when  he  departs  from  the  house  of  God,  it 
will  be  to  return  to  the  scenes  and  companions  of  his  thought- 
lessness and  dissipation.  Yet  I  do  not  despair  of  this  man.  I 
do  not  conclude  my  labor  thrown  away.  I  am  looking  forward 
to  an  hour,  which  may  be  yet  very  distant,  when  experience 
will  have  taught  him  the  worthlessness  of  what  he  now 
seeks,  or  a  broken  constitution  have  incapacitated  him  for 
his  most  cherished  pleasures.  The  hour  may  not  come 
whilst  I  am  on  the  earth  ;  I  may  have  long  before  departed, 
and  a  stranger  may  be  ministering  in  my  place.  But  I 
shall  be  in  that  man's  chamber,  and  I  shall  stand  at  his 
bed-side,  and  I  shall  repeat  my  now  despised  exhortation. 
There  will  be,  as  it  were,  a  resurrection  of  the  present 
scene  and  the  present  sermon.  The  words,  which  now 
hardly  gain  a  hearing,  but  which,  nevertheless,  are  bury- 
ing themselves  in  the  recesses  of  the  mind,  that  they  may 
wait  an  appointed  season,  will  be  spoken  to  the  very  soul, 
and  penetrate  to  the  quick,  and  produce  that  godly  sorrow 
which  worketh  repentance.  And  when  you  ask  me  upon 
what  I  am  bold  enough  to  ground  such  a  prophecy,  and 
from  what  data  I  venture  to  predict  that  my  sermon  shall 
not  die,  but,  though  long  forgotten,  start  finally  into  power 
and  persuasiveness — my  reply  is.  that  the  case  of  the  first 
son  in  the  parable  must  have  cases  which  correspond  to  it 
in  all  ages  of  the  church,  and  that  we  read  of  this  son,  that, 
though  he  refused,  when  bidden,  to  work  in  the  vineyard, 
yet  "  afterward  he  repented  and  went." 


346  THE    TWO    SONS. 

There  are  two  cautions  suggested  by  tins  latter  part  of 
our  subject,  and  with  these  we  would  conclude.  The  first 
is  to  parents,  and  guardians,  and  ministers  ;  in  short,  to  all 
whose  business  it  may  be  to  counsel  and  instruct.  Let  not 
the  apparent  want  of  success  induce  you  to  relax  in  your 
endeavors.  You  see  that  he  who  gives  you  a  flat  refusal, 
may  ultimately  reward  you  better  than  he  who  gives  you  a 
fair  promise.  Be  not,  therefore,  disheartened  ;  but  rather  act 
on  the  wise  man's  advice,  "  In  the  morning  sow  thy  seed, 
and  in  the  evening  withhold  not  thy  hand  ;  for  thou  knowest 
not  whether  shall  prosper,  either  this  or  that,  or  whether 
they  both  shall  be  alike  good." 

Our  second  caution  is  to  those  who  may  be  ready,  with 
the  first  son,  to  give  a  direct  refusal,  when  bidden  to  go  and 
work  in  the  vineyard.  Let  not  the  thought,  that  you  may 
afterwards  repent,  encourage  you  in  your  determination  that 
you  will  not  yet  obey.  The  man  who  presumes  on  what  is 
told  us  of  the  first  son  will  never,  in  all  probability,  be  re- 
presented by  that  son.  I  may  have  hopes  of  a  man  whose 
moral  slumbers  I  cannot  at  all  break  ;  I  almost  despair  of  a 
man  whom  I  can  so  far  awaken  that  he  makes  a  resolution 
to  delay.  The  determining  to  put  off  is  the  worst  of  all  symp- 
toms :  it  shows  that  conscience  has  been  roused,  and  then 
pacified  ;  and  wo  unto  the  man  who  has  drugs  with  which 
he  can  lull  conscience  to  sleep.  Again  therefore  we  tell  you 
that  the  exhortation  of  the  text  is  limited  as  to  time.  "  Go, 
work  to-day  in  my  vineyard."  To-morrow  the  pulse  may 
be  still,  and  there  is  "  no  work  nor  wisdom  in  the  grave." 
To-day  ye  are  yet  amongst  the  living,  and  may  enroll  your- 
selves with  the  laborers  whose  harvest  shall  be  immortality. 


SERMON. 


THE   DISPERSION  AND  RESTORATION  OF  THE 
JEWS.* 


''  0  Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  thou  that  killest  the  prophets,  and  stonest  them 
which  are  sent  unto  thee,  how  often  would  I  have  gathered  thy  children 
together,  even  as  a  hen  gathereth  her  chickens  under  her  wings,  and 
ye  would  not !  Behold,  your  house  is  left  unto  you  desolate.  For  I 
say  unto  you,  ye  shall  not  see  me  henceforth  till  ye  shall  say,  Blessed  is 
he  that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord."— St.  Matthew,  23  :  37,  38,  39. 

These  words  occur  in  the  Gospel  of  St.  Luke,  as  well  as 
in  that  of  St.  Matthew;  but  the  times  of  delivery  were  un- 
doubtedly different.  As  given  by  St.  Luke,  they  form  part 
of  Christ's  answer  to  certain  Pharisees,  who  had  come  to  him 
with  intelligence  that  Herod  sought  to  kill  him.  At  this  time, 
as  it  would  seem,  our  Savior  was  making  his  last  circuit  of 
Galilee,  before  his  arrival  at  Jerusalem  at  the  fourth  pass- 
over.  But,  as  given  by  St.  Matthew,  the  words  appear  to 
have  been  the  last  which  Christ  uttered  in  public,  having 
been  delivered  just  before  his  final  departure  from  the  tem- 
ple, on  the  evening,  most  probably,  of  the  Wednesday  in 
Passion-week.  You  cannot  have  any  doubt,  if  you  compare 
the  passages  in  the  two  Evangelists,  that  the  words  were 
uttered  on  very  different  occasions,  so  that,  if  what  they  con- 
tain of  prophecy  may  have  had  a  seeming  accomplishment 
between  the  two  deliveries,  we  should  still  have  to  search 
for  an  ampler  fulfillment. 

*  Preached  on  behalf  of  the  London  Society  for  the  conversion  of  the  Jews. 


548  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

We  make  this  remark,  because,  as  you  must  all  remember, 
when  Christ  made  his  public  entry  into  Jerusalem  from 
Bethany,  a  few  days  before  his  crucifixion,  he  was  attended 
by  a  great  multitude,  who  saluted  him  in  the  language  of  our 
text.  "  And  they  that  went  before,  and  that  followed,  cried, 
saying,  Hosanna,  blessed  is  he  that  cometh  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord."  Had  our  text  been  found  only  in  St.  Luke,  de- 
livered on  an  occasion  which  preceded  the  triumphant  re- 
ception of  Christ,  it  might  have  been  argued  that  what 
occurred  at  this  reception  fulfilled  all  its  prophecy.  Yet  it 
would  then  have  been  easy  to  show  that  Christ  must  have 
referred  to  some  more  permanent  reception  of  himself  than 
that  given  by  an  inconstant  multitude,  who,  within  a  few 
days,  were  as  vehement  in  demanding  his  crucifixion  as 
they  had  been  in  shouting  Hosanna.  We  are  however 
spared  the  necessity  of  advancing,  or  pressing,  this  argu- 
ment, inasmuch  as  the  words,  as  recorded  by  St.  Matthew, 
were  uttered  subsequently  to  Christ's  entry  into  Jerusalem, 
and  could  not,  therefore,  have  been  fulfilled  by  that  event. 

It  should  further  be  remarked,  that  the  saying,  "Blessed 
is  he  that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,"  is  taken  from  a 
Psalm,  the  118th,  which  the  Jews  themselves  interpreted  of 
the  Christ.  It  is  the  Psalm  in  which  are  found  the  remark- 
able words,  "  The  stone  which  the  builders  refused  is  be- 
come the  head-stone  of  the  corner" — words  which  Jesus 
brought  to  bear  on  the  chief  priests  and  scribes  when  they 
deprecated  the  taking  the  vineyard  from  the  unfaithful 
husbandmen.  We  may  therefore  suppose,  that,  in  quoting 
from  this  Psalm,  the  people  designed  to  express  their  belief 
that  Jesus  was  Messiah.  We  may  further  suppose,  that,  in 
declaring  that  Jerusalem  should  not  see  him  again,  till  ready 
to  apply  to  him  the  words  he  adduced,  our  Lord  had  respect 
to  some  future  acknowledgment  of  his  kingly  pretensions. 

We  wish  you  to  bear  carefully  with  you  these  prelimina- 
ry observations,  as  necessary  to  the  settling  the  right  inter- 
pretation of  our  text.  Whatever  may  be  your  opinion  of  the 
import  of  the  passage,  as  delivered  by  St.  Luke,  you  can 
hardly  fail  to  allow,  that,  as  delivered  by  St.  Matthew,  it  can 


RESTORATION    OF    THE    JEWS.  549 

have  respect  to  no  events  recorded  in  the  Gospels.  The 
words  were  uttered  by  Christ,  when  concluding  his  public 
ministry :  he  left  the  temple  so  soon  as  he  had  pronounced 
them,  and  never  again  entered  its  precincts.  We  are,  there- 
fore, to  take  the  text  as  Christ's  parting  address  to  his  unbe- 
lieving countrymen  ;  so  that,  in  whatever  degree  they  are 
prophetic,  in  that  same  degree  must  they  belong  to  occur- 
rences which  were  to  follow  his  departure  from  earth. 

Now  it  will  be  admitted  by  you  all,  that  there  is  some- 
thing singularly  pathetic  in  the  text,  when  thus  regarded  as 
the  last  words  of  Christ  to  the  Jews.  The  Savior  is  taking 
his  farewell  of  those  whom  he  had  striven,  by  every  means, 
to  lead  to  repentance.  He  had  wrought  the  most  wonderful 
miracles,  and  appealed  to  them  in  proof  that  he  came  forth 
from  God.  He  had  delivered  the  most  persuasive  discourses, 
setting  forth,  under  variety  of  imagery,  the  ruin  that  would 
follow  his  being  rejected,  and  offering  the  largest  blessings 
to  all  who  would  come  to  him  as  a  deliverer.  But  all  had 
been  in  vain  :  and  he  knew  that  the  time  was  at  hand,  when 
the  measure  of  guilt  would  be  filled  up,  and  their  Messiah 
be  crucified  by  the  Jews.  Yet  he  would  not  depart  without 
another  and  a  bolder  remonstrance.  The  chapter,  of  which 
our  text  is  the  conclusion,  and  which,  as  we  have  already 
stated,  is  the  parting  sermon  of  Christ,  is  without  parallel  in 
the  Gospels  for  indignant  rebuke  and  emphatic  denuncia- 
tion. The  preacher  seems,  for  a  while,  to  have  laid  aside  his 
meekness,  and  to  have  assumed  the  character  of  a  stern  he- 
rald of  wrath.  And  I  know  not  that  there  is  any  where  to 
be  found  such  a  specimen  of  lofty  and  withering  eloquence. 
You  cannot  read  it  without  emotions  of  awe,  and  almost  of 
fear.  Confronted  by  those  who,  he  knew,  thirsted  for  his  blood, 
Christ  intrepidly  charged  them  with  their  crimes,  and  pre- 
dicted their  punishment.  Had  he  been  invested  with  all  hu- 
man authority,  in  place  of  standing  as  a  defenceless  and  des- 
pised individual,  he  could  not  have  uttered  a  sterner  and 
more  heart-searching  invective.  The  marvel  is,  that  his  ene- 
mies should  have  allowed  him  to  pour  forth  his  tremendous 
oratory,  that  they  did  not  fall  upon  him,  without  regard  to 


550  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

the  sacredness  of  the  place,  and  take  a  fierce  and  summary 
revenge.  "  Wo  unto  you,  scribes  and  pharisees,  hypocrites  !" 
is  the  burden  of  his  address :  he  reiterates  the  wo,  till  the 
temple  walls  must  have  rung  with  the  ominous  syllables. 
And  then  he  bids  the  nation  fill  up  the  measure  of  their  fa- 
thers. Their  fathers  had  slain  the  prophets,  and  made  great 
advances  towards  that  ripeness  of  iniquity  which  was  to 
mark  the  land  out  as  ready  for  vengeance.  But  the  national 
guilt  was  not  yet  complete.  There  was  a  crime  by  which 
the  children  were  to  outdo,  and,  at  the  same  time,  consum- 
mate the  sinfulness  of  their  fathers.  And  Christ  calls  them 
to  the  perpetration  of  this  crime.  They  were  bent  on  accom- 
plishing his  death— let  them  nail  him  to  the  cross,  and  then 
would  their  guiltiness  reach  its  height,  and  the  accumulated 
vengeance  descend  with  a  wild  and  overwhelming  might. 
"  That  upon  you  may  come  all  the  righteous  blood  shed 
upon  the  earth,  from  the  blood  of  righteous  Abel  unto  the 
blood  of  Zacharias,  son  of  Barachias,  whom  ye  slew  between 
the  temple,  and  the  altar.  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  all  these 
things  shall  come  upon  this  generation." 

And  here  the  Savior  might  be  said  to  have  exhausted 
threatening ;  for  what  denunciation  could  be  more  tremen- 
dous, or  more  comprehensive  ?  We  may  picture  him  to  our- 
selves, launching  this  terrible  sentence,  a  more  than  human 
fire  in  his  eye,  and  a  voice  more  deep-toned  and  thrilling 
than  ever  issued  from  mortal  lips.  I  know  of  nothing  that 
would  be  more  sublime  and  commanding  in  representation, 
if  there  could  be  transferred  to  the  canvass  the  vivid  delinea- 
tions of  thought,  than  the  scene  thus  enacted  in  the  temple. 
We  figure  the  Redeemer  undaunted  by  the  menacing  looks 
and  half-suppressed  murmurs  of  the  fierce  throng  by  which 
he  was  surrounded.  He  becomes  more  and  more  impas- 
sioned in  his  eloquence,  rising  from  one  bold  rebuke  to  an- 
other, and  throwing  into  his  language  a  greater  and  greater 
measure  of  reproachfulness  and  defiance.  And  when  he  has 
compelled  his  hearers  to  shrink  before  the  rush  of  his  invec- 
tive, he  assumes  the  prophetic  office,  and,  as  though  armed 
with  all  the  thunders  of  divine  wrath,  announces  authorita- 


RESTORATION    OF    THE    JEWS.  551 

lively  the  approach  of  unparalleled  desolation.    This  is  the 
moment  we  would  seize  for  delineation — though  what  pen- 
cil can  think  to  portray  the  lofty  bearing,  the  pre-eminent 
dignity,  the  awful  glance,  the  terribleness,  yet  magnificence, 
of  gesture,  which   must  have   characterized  the  Mediator, 
when,  wrought  up  into  all  the  ardency  of  superhuman  zeal, 
he  brake  into  the  overwhelming  malediction,  i:  Verily  I  say 
unto  you,  all  these  things  shall  come  upon  this  generation?" 
But  if  the  scene  of  this  moment  defy  the   painter's  art, 
what  shall  we  say  of  that  of  the  succeeding?    No  sooner  had 
Christ  reached  that  height  of  intrepid  vehemence  at  whicli 
we  have  just  beheld  him,  than  he  gave  way  to  a  burst  of 
tenderness,  and  changed   the    language    of  invective   for 
that  of  lamentation.    At  one  moment  he  is  dealing  out  the 
arrows  of  a  stern  and  lacerating  oratory,  and,  the  next,  he  is 
melted  into  tears,  and  can  find  no  words  but  those  of  anguish 
and  regret.  Indeed  it  is  a  transition  more  exquisitely  beauti- 
ful than  can  be  found  in  the  most  admired  specimens  of 
human  eloquence  ;  and  we  feel  that  there  must  have  passed 
a  change  over  the  countenance,  and  the  whole  bearing  of 
the  Savior,  which  imagination  cannot  catch,  and  which,  if 
it  could,  the  painter  could  not  fix.    There  must  have  risen 
before  him  the  imagery  of  a  wrath  and  a  wretchedness,  such 
as  had  never  yet  overtaken  any  nation  of  the  earth.    And 
the  people  that  should  be  thus  signalled  out  were  his  coun- 
trymen, his  kinsmen  after  the  flesh,  over  whom  his  heart 
yearned,   and  whom  he  had  affectionately  labored  to  con- 
vince of  danger,   and  conduct  to  safety.    He  felt  therefore, 
we  may  believe,  a  sudden  and  excruciating  sorrow,  so  that 
the  judgments  which  he  foretold  pressed  on  his  own  spirit, 
and  caused  him  deep  agony.    He  was  too  pure  a  being,  and 
he  loved  with  too  abiding  and  disinterested  a  love,  to  harbor 
any  feeling  allied  with  revenge  ;  and,  therefore,  though  it 
was  for  rejecting  himself  that    those  whom  he  addressed 
were  about  to  be  punished,  he  could  not  contemplate  the 
punishment  but  with  bitterness  and  anguish. 

And  hence  the  rapid  and  thrilling  change  from  the  preach- 
er of  wrath  to  the  mourner  over  suffering.    Hence  the  sud- 


552  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

den  laying  aside  of  all  his  awful  vehemence,  and  the  break- 
ing into  pathetic  and  heart-touching  expressions.  Oh,  you 
feel  that  the  Redeemer  must  have  been  subdued,  as  it  were, 
and  mastered,  by  the  view  of  the  misery  which  he  saw  com- 
ing on  Judea,  and  by  the  remembrance  of  all  he  had  done 
to  avert  it  from  the  land,  ere  he  could  have  passed  thus  in- 
stantaneously from  indignant  rebuke  to  exquisite  tender- 
ness. And  it  cannot,  we  think,  be  without  mingled  emotions 
of  awe  and  delight,  that  you  mark  the  transition  from  the 
herald  of  vengeance  to  the  sympathizer  with  the  wretched. 
Just  as  you  are  shrinking  from  the  fierce  and  withering  de- 
nunciations, almost  scathed  by  the  fiery  eloquence  which 
glares  and  flashes  with  the  anger  of  the  Lord — just  as  you 
are  expecting  a  new  burst  of  threatening,  a  further  and 
wilder  malediction  from  the  voice  which  seems  to  shake  the 
magnificent  temple — there  is  heard  the  sound  as  of  one  who 
is  struggling  with  sorrow  ;  and  in  a  tone  of  rich  plaintive- 
ness,  in  accents  musical  in  their  sadness,  and  betraying  the 
agony  of  a  stricken  spirit,  there  fall  upon  you  these  touching 
and  penetrating  words,  "  O  Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  how  often 
would  I  have  gathered  thy  children  together,  even  as  a  hen 
gathereth  her  chickens  under  her  wings,  and  ye  would  not." 

But  there  is  so  much  of  important  matter  in  this  and  the 
following  verses,  that  it  is  time  that  we  confine  ourselves  to 
considering  the  statements  here  made  by  Christ.  We  may 
arrange  these  statements  under  three  divisions.  Under  the 
first,  we  shall  have  to  consider  what  had  been  done  for  Je- 
rusalem ;  under  the  second,  the  consequences  to  the  Jews  of 
their  rejecting  the  Christ ;  and  under  the  third,  the  future 
conversion  of  this  unbelieving  people. 

Now  you  must  be  quite  prepared  for  our  regarding  the 
Jews  as  a  typical  nation,  so  that,  in  God's  dealings  with 
them,  we  may  read,  as  in  a  glass,  his  dealings  with  his 
church,  whether  collectively  or  individually.  You  must  be 
aware  that  the  history  of  the  Israelites  is  full  of  symbolic 
occurrence  ;  and  that,  without  drawing  any  forced  parallel, 
the  narrative  may  be  transferred,  in  various  of  its  parts,  to 
our  own  day  and  generation,  and  be  used  as  descriptive  of 


RESTORATION    OF    THE    JEWS.  553 

what  occurs  amongst  christians.  You  will  -not,  therefore,  be 
surprised,  if  we  consider  Christ's  remonstrance  with  Jerusa- 
lem as  every  way  applicable  to  the  impenitent  of  later 
times,  and  as  affirming  nothing  in  regard  of  the  Jews  which 
may  not  be  affirmed,  with  equal  truth,  of  many  amongst 
ourselves.  There  had  been  much  done  for  Jerusalem  ;  and 
it  is  in  exquisitely  moving  terms  that  Christ  states  his  own 
willingness  to  have  sheltered  that  city.  But  herein,  we  are 
assured,  Jerusalem  was  but  the  representative  of  individual 
transgressors,  so  that  the  very  same  words  might  be  ad- 
dressed to  any  amongst  us  who  have  obstinately  withstood 
the  motions  of  God's  Spirit  and  the  invitations  of  his  Gos- 
pel. We  cannot  indeed  be  said  to  have  killed  the  prophets, 
and  stoned  them  that  were  sent  unto  us.  But  if  we  have 
resisted  the  engines,  whatever  they  may  have  been,  through 
which  God  has  carried  on  the  moral  attack  ;  if  we  have 
turned  a  deaf  ear  to  the  prophet  and  the  messenger,  and 
thus  done  our  part  towards  frustrating  their  mission  ;  then 
we  are  virtually  in  the  same  position  as  Jerusalem,  and  may 
regard  ourselves  as  addressed  in  the  language  of  our  text. 
And  when  the  verse  is  thus  withdrawn  from  its  merely 
national  application,  and  we  consider  it  as  capable  of  being 
exemplified  in  the  history  of  our  own  lives,  it  presents  such 
an  account  of  God's  dealings  with  the  impenitent,  as  yields 
to  none  in  importance  and  interest.  We  observe  first,  that 
however  unable  we  may  be  to  reconcile  the  certainty  of  a 
foreknown  destruction  with  the  possibility  of  avoiding  it,  we 
are  bound  to  believe,  on  the  testimony  of  our  text,  that  no 
man's  doom  is  so  fixed  that  it  may  not  be  averted  by  repent- 
ance. It  may  appear  to  us,  that,  all  along,  the  destruction 
of  Jerusalem  had  been  a  settled  thing  in  the  purposes  of  the 
Almighty ;  and  that  God's  plans  were  so  arranged  on  the 
supposition  of  the  final  infidelity  of  the  Jews,  that  they 
could  not  have  allowed  a  final  belief  in  the  Christ.  Yet 
Christ  declares  of  Jerusalem,  that  he  would  often  have  ga- 
thered her  children  together,  as  a  hen  gathereth  her  chickens 
under  her  wings  ;  and  that  only  their  own  wilful  infidelity 
had  prevented  his  sheltering  them  from  every  outbreak  of 
70 


554  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

wrath.  We  cannot,  therefore,  doubt  that  it  was  quite  within 
the  power  of  the  Jews  to  have  repented  ;  and  that,  had  they 
hearkened  to  the  voice  of  the  Savior,  they  would  have 
escaped  all  that  punishment  which  appears  so  predeter- 
mined, that,  to  suppose  it  remitted,  is  to  suppose  God's  plans 
thwarted.  We  fully  admit  that  the  Savior  must  have  known 
that  those  whom  he  called  would  not  obey.  But  there  is  all 
the  difference  between  saying  that  they  could  not  obey,  and 
that  they  would  not  obey.  In  saying  that  they  could  not 
obey,  we  make  them  the  subjects  of  some  hidden  decree, 
which  placed  an  impassable  barrier  between  themselves  and 
repentance,  and  which  therefore  rendered  nugatory,  yea,  re- 
duced into  mere  mockery,  the  warnings  and  invitations  with 
which  they  were  plied.  But  in  saying  that  they  would  not 
obey,  we  charge  the  whole  blame  on  the  perverseness  of  the 
human  will,  and  suppose  a  clear  space  left,  notwithstanding 
the  foreknown  infidelity,  for  those  remonstrances  and  per- 
suasions which  are  wholly  out  of  place  where  there  is  no 
power  of  hearkening  to  the  call. 

And  what  we  thus  hold  in  regard  of  Jerusalem,  must  be 
equally  held  in  regard  of  every  individual  amongst  our- 
selves. We  cannot  doubt  that  there  is  not  one  in  this  assem- 
bly whose  eternal  condition  is  not  as  well  known  to  the 
Almighty  as  though  it  were  fixed  by  an  absolute  decree. 
But  then  it  should  be  carefully  observed,  that  this  foreknow- 
ledge of  God  puts  no  restraint  upon  man,  obliges  him  not  to 
one  course  rather  than  to  another,  but  leaves  him  as  free  to 
choose  between  life  and  death,  as  though  the  choice  must 
be  made  before  it  could  be  conjectured.  The  clouds  of  ven- 
geance were  just  ready  to  burst  upon  Jerusalem ;  but  the 
only  reason  why  her  children  were  not  sheltered,  was  that 
"  they  would  not."  Thus  with  ourselves — God  may  be  as 
certain  of  our  going  down  finally  into  the  pit,  as  though  we 
had  already  been  thrown  to  destruction  ;  but  the  single 
reason,  given  at  the  last,  why  we  have  not  escaped,  will  be 
our  own  rejection  of  a  proffered  deliverance.  There  is  no 
mystery  in  this,  nothing  dark,  nothing  inscrutable.  There 
is  no  room  for  pleading  that  a  divine  decree  was  against  us; 


RESTORATION    OF    THE    JEWS.  555 

and  that,  therefore,  salvation,  if  nominally  offered,  was  vir- 
tually out  of  reach.  It  was  not  out  of  the  reach  of  Jerusa- 
lem, though  her  grasping  it  would  have  apparently  deranged 
the  whole  scheme  of  redemption.  And  it  is  not  out  of  the 
reach  of  any  one  of  us,  however  the  final  impenitence  of  this 
or  that  individual  may  be  fully  ascertained  by  the  foreknow- 
ledge of  God.  It  is  nothing  to  say  that  it  is  impossible  for 
me  to  do  what  God  knows  1  shall  not  do.  It  is  not  God's 
foreknowledge,  it  is  only  my  own  wilfulness,  which  makes 
the  impossibility.  I  am  not  hampered,  I  am  not  shackled  by 
God's  foreknowledge  :  I  am  every  jot  as  free  as  though  there 
were  no  foreknowledge.  And  thus,  without  searching  into 
secret  things  which  belong  only  to  God,  and  yet  maintaining 
in  all  their  integrity  the  divine  attributes,  we  can  apply  to 
every  one  who  goes  oti  in  impenitence,  the  touching  remon- 
strance of  Christ  in  our  text.  If  such  a  man  reach  that  mo- 
ment, which  had  been  reached  by  Jerusalem,  the  moment 
when  the  day  of  grace  terminates,  and  the  overtures  of 
mercy  are  brought  to  a  close,  the  Savior  may  say  to  him, 
"  How  often  would  I  have  gathered  thee  under  my  wings, 
and  thou  wouldest  not !" 

How  often  !  Who  is  there  amongst  us  unto  whom  have 
not  been  vouchsafed  repeated  opportunities  of  knowing  the 
things  which  belong  unto  peace?  Who,  that  has  not  been 
frequently  moved,  by  the  expostulations  of  conscience  and 
the  suggestions  of  God's  Spirit,  to  flee  the  wrath  to  come? 
Who,  upon  whom  the  means  of  grace  have  not  been  accu- 
mulated, so  that,  time  after  time,  he  has  been  threatened,  and 
warned,  and  reasoned  with,  and  besought?  How  often  !  I 
would  have  gathered  thee  in  thy  prosperity,  when  thou  wast 
spoken  to  in  mercies,  and  bidden  to  remember  the  hand 
whence  they  came.  I  would  have  gathered  thee  in  thine 
adversity,  when  sorrow  had  softened  thine  heart,  and  thou 
didst  look  on  the  right  hand,  and  on  the  left,  for  a  comforter. 
How  often  !  By  every  sermon  which  thou  hast  heard,  by 
every  death  in  thy  neighborhood,  by  every  misgiving  of  soul, 
by  every  joy  that  cheered  thee,  and  by  every  grief  that  sad- 
dened thee,  I  have  spoken,  but  thou  wouldest  not  hear,  I 


556  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

have  called,  but  thou  wouldest  not  answer.  We  may  be 
thoroughly  assured  that  there  is  not  one  of  us  who  shall  be 
able  to  plead  at  the  last,  that  he  was  not  sufficiently  sum- 
moned, not  sufficiently  invited.  There  is  not  one  of  us,  who 
shall  be  able  to  charge  his  perdition  on  any  thing  but  his 
own  choice.  "  How  often,"  "  how  often,"  will  ring  in  the  ear 
of  every  man  who  remains  unconverted  beneath  the  minis- 
try of  the  Gospel ;  the  remembrance  of  abused  mercies,  and 
slighted  means,  and  neglected  opportunities,  being  as  the 
knell  of  his  unalterable  doom.  And,  oh,  as  the  wicked  be- 
hold the  righteous  sheltered  beneath  the  Mediator's  protec- 
tion, from  all  the  fury  which  gathers  and  hurries  over  a  pol- 
luted creation,  we  can  believe,  that,  of  all  racking  thoughts, 
the  most  fearful  will  be,  that  they  too  might  have  been  co- 
vered by  the  same  mighty  wing,  and  that,  had  they  not 
chosen  exposure  to  the  iron  sleet  of  God's  wrath,  they  too 
might  have  rested  in  peace,  whilst  the  strange  work  of 
destruction  went  forward.  Therefore  will  their  own  con- 
sciences either  pass  or  ratify  their  sentence.  They  will  shrink 
down  to  their  fire  and  their  shame,  not  more  compelled  by  a 
ministry  of  vengeance,  than  torn  by  a  consciousness  that 
they,  like  the  children  of  Jerusalem,  might  have  often  taken 
shelter  under  the  suretyship  of  a  Redeemer,  and  that  they, 
like  the  children  of  Jerusalem,  are  naked  and  defenceless, 
only  because  they  would  not  be  covered  with  his  feathers. 
But  we  go  on  to  the  second  topic  which  is  presented  to 
us  by  the  words  under  review,  the  consequences  to  the  Jews 
of  their  rejecting  the  Christ.  These  consequences  are,  the 
desolation  of  their  national  condition,  "  Behold,  your  house 
is  left  unto  you  desolate,"  and  the  judicial  blindness  which 
would  settle  upon  them,  so  that,  until  a  certain  period  had 
elapsed,  they  should  not  see,  and  acknowledge,  the  Savior. 
This  latter  consequence  is  stated  in  the  concluding  verse  of 
the  text,  "  ye  shall  not  see  me  henceforth,  till  ye  shall  say, 
Blessed  is  he  that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the  Lord" — that  is, 
I  shall  withdraw  myself  altogether  from  you,  till  a  time  ar- 
rive at  which  you  shall  be  prepared  to  welcome  me  as  Mes- 
siah. Thus  we  have  a  double  prophecy  of  what  should  befall 


RESTORATION    OF    THE    JEWS.  557 

the  Jews,  a  prophecy  of  their  misery,  and  a  prophecy  of  their 
infidelity.  And  along  with  this  prophecy  there  is  an  evident 
intimation  of  what  has  been  the  chief  characteristic  of  the 
Jews,  their  complete  separation,  through  all  their  dispersions, 
from  every  other  people.  We  derive  this  intimation  from  the 
terms  in  which  their  misery  is  foretold,  "  Behold,  your  house 
is  left  unto  yon  desolate/'  It  seems  as  though  it  had  been 
said  that  they  were  still  to  have  a  house,  but  that  house 
would  be  desolate ;  Judea  would  be  theirs,  but  themselves 
exiles  from  its  provinces.  And  if  the  house  were  to  remain 
appropriated  to  the  Jews,  the  Jews  must  remain  distinguished 
from  other  people ;  so  that  what  predicts  their  punishment, 
predicts  also,  though  in  more  obscure  terms,  their  being  kept 
apart  from  the  rest  of  humankind,  that  they  may  at  length 
be  reinstated  in  the  possession  of  their  fathers. 

But  we  confine  ourselves  at  present  to  the  prediction  of 
their  state,  as  affected  by  their  rejection  of  Christ.  They 
were  to  be  desolate,  but  distinct  from  other  people  ;  and  an 
obstinate  unbelief  was  to  characterize  them  through  the 
whole  period  of  "the  times  of  the  Gentiles."  And  we  need 
hardly  tell  you  of  the  accuracy  with  which  such  prophecy 
has  been  all  along  fulfilled.  The  predictions  which  bear 
reference  to  the  Jews,  have  this  advantage  over  all  other, 
that  their  accomplishment  may  be  said  to  force  itself  on  the 
notice  of  the  least  observant,  and  not  to  require,  in  order  to 
its  demonstration,  the  labor  of  a  learned  research.  Of  all 
surprising  phenomena,  there  is  perhaps  none  as  wonderful 
as  that  of  the  Jews'  preserving,  through  long  centuries,  their 
distinguishing  features.  It  would  have  been  comparatively 
nothing,  had  the  Jews  remained  in  Judea,  that  they  should 
have  continued  marked  off  from  every  other  people.  But 
that  they  should  have  been  dispersed  into  all  nations,  and 
yet  have  amalgamated  with  none  ;  that  they  should  be  every 
where  found,  and  yet  be  every  where  the  same ;  that  they 
should  submit  themselves  to  all  forms  of  government,  and 
adopt  all  varieties  of  customs,  and  yet  be  unable,  after  any 
lapse  of  time,  to  extirpate  their  national  marks ;  we  may 
pronounce  this  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  mankind,  and 


558  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

inexplicable  but  as  the  fulfillment  of  prophecy.  If  the  Jews, 
though  removed  from  their  own  land,  had  been  confined  to 
one  other,  we  might  have  found  causes  of  a  protracted  dis- 
tinction, in  national  antipathies  or  legislative  enactments. 
But  when  the  dispersion  has  been  so  universal,  that,  where- 
soever man  treads,  the  Jew  has  made  his  dwelling,  and  yet 
the  distinction  is  so  abiding  that  you  may  always  recognise 
the  Jew  for  yourself,  there  is  no  place  left  for  the  explana- 
tions which  might  be  given,  were  the  marvel  limited  to  a 
district  or  age ;  and  we  have  before  us  a  miracle,  which 
would  not  be  exceeded,  nay,  not  by  the  thousandth  part 
equalled,  were  we  privileged  to  behold  the  mightiest  suspen- 
sion of  the  known  laws  of  nature. 

Neither  is  it  only  in  the  preservation  of  their  distinguish- 
ing characteristics  that  the  Jews  are  wonderful,  and  give 
evidence  that  Christ  prophesied  through  a  more  than  hu- 
man foresight.  The  continued  infidelity  of  the  Jews  is  every 
jot  as  surprising  as  their  continued  separation.  We  are 
quite  at  a  loss,  on  any  natural  principles,  to  account  for  their 
infidelity.  It  is  easy  to  explain  the  little  way  which  the 
Gospel  makes  amongst  the  heathen,  but  not  the  far  less 
which  it  makes  amongst  the  Jews.  I  may  well  expect  to 
be  met  by  a  most  vigorous  opposition  on  the  part  of  the  hea- 
then ;  for  I  go  to  them  with  a  religious  system  which  de- 
mands the  unqualified  rejection  of  their  own  ;  we  have 
scarcely  an  inch  of  ground  in  common  ;  and  if  I  would  pre- 
vail on  them  to  receive  as  true  what  I  bring,  I  must  prevail 
on  them  to  renounce  as  false  what  they  believe.  But  the 
case  seems  widely  different  when  my  attack  is  on  the  Jew. 
We  have  a  vast  deal  of  common  ground.  We  believe  in  the 
same  God  ;  we  receive  the  same  Scriptures ;  we  look  for 
the  same  Messiah.  There  is  but  one  point  of  debate  between 
us  ;  and  that  is,  whether  Jesus  of  Nazareth  were  the  Christ. 
And  thus  the  field  of  argument  is  surprisingly  narrowed  ;  in 
place  of  having  to  fight  our  way  painfully  from  one  prin- 
ciple to  another,  and  of  settling  all  the  points  of  natural  reli- 
gion, as  preliminary  to  the  introduction  of  the  mysteries  of 
revealed,  we  can  go  at  once  to  the  single  truth  at  issue  be- 


RESTORATION    OF    THE    JtWS.  559 

tween  us,  and  discuss,  from  writings  which  we  equally  re- 
ceive as  inspired,  the  claims  of  Jesus  to  the  being  Messiah. 
Surely  it  might  have  been  expected,  that  the  infidelity  of 
the  Jew  would  have  been  far  more  easily  overcome  than 
that  of  the  heathen  ;  and  that,  in  setting  ourselves  to  win 
converts  to  Christianity,  there  would  have  been  a  better 
prospect  of  gaining  credence  for  the  New  Testament  where 
the  Old  was  acknowledged,  than  of  making  way  for  the 
whole  Bible,  where  there  was  nothing  but  idolatry. 

You  are  to  add  to  this,  that,  whatever  the  likelihood  that 
the  Jew  would  reject  Christianity  on  its  first  publication,  it 
was  a  likelihood  which  diminished  with  every  year  that 
rolled  away  ;  inasmuch  as  every  year  which  brought  no 
other  Messiah,  swelled  the  demonstration  that  Jesus  was  the 
Christ.  It  is  not  to  be  explained,  on  any  of  the  principles 
to  which  we  ordinarily  recur  in  accounting  for  infidelity, 
why  the  Jews  persisted  in  rejecting  Jesus,  when  the  time 
had  long  passed  which  themselves  fixed  for  Messiah's  ap- 
pearing. Their  prophecies  had  clearly  determined  that 
Christ  would  come  whilst  the  second  temple  was  standing, 
and  at  the  close  of  seventy  weeks  from  the  termination  of 
the  Babylonish  captivity.  But  when  the  second  temple  had 
been  long  even  with  the  ground,  and  the  seventy  weeks,  on 
every  possible  computation,  had  long  ago  terminated,  the 
Jews,  we  might  have  thought,  would  have  been  compelled 
to  admit,  either  that  Messiah  had  come,  or  that  their  expec- 
tation was  vain,  and  that  no  deliverer  would  appear.  There 
seemed  no  alternative,  if  they  rejected  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
but  the  rejecting  their  own  Scriptures.  So  that  we  can  have 
no  hesitation  in  affirming,  that  the  continued  infidelity,  like 
the  continued  separation,  of  the  Jews  is  wholly  inexplicable, 
unless  referred  to  the  appointment  and  judgment  of  God. 
We  can  no  more  account,  on  any  common  principles,  for 
their  persisting  in  expecting  a  Redeemer,  when  the  predic- 
tions on  which  they  rest  manifestly  pertain  to  a  long-departed 
age,  than  for  their  retaining  all  their  national  peculiarities, 
when  they  have  been  for  centuries  "  without  a  king,  and 
without  a  prince,  and  without  a  sacrifice."    In  both  cases 


560  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

they  accomplish,  and  that  too  most  signally,  the  prophecies 
of  Christ — their  house  being  left  unto  them  desolate,  and  a 
judicial  blindness  having  settled  on  their  understanding. 

And  never,  therefore,  should  we  meet  a  .lew,  without  feel- 
ing that  we  meet  the  strongest  witness  for  the  truth  of  our 
religion.  I  know  not  how  those,  who  are  proof  ngainst  all 
other  testimony,  can  withstand  that  furnished  by  the  condi- 
tion of  the  Jews.  They  may  have  their  doubts  as  to  the  per- 
formance of  the  miracles  recorded  in  the  writings  of  evange- 
lists ;  but  here  is  a  miracle,  wrought  before  their  eyes,  and 
which  ceases  not  to  be  miracle  because  long  continued. 
We  call  it  miracle,  because  altogether  contrary  to  what  we 
had  reason  to  expect,  and  not  to  be  explained  on  mere  na- 
tural principles.  That  the  Jews  have  not  ceased  to  be  Jews  ; 
that,  though  scattered  over  the  world,  domesticated  in  every 
land,  at  one  time  hunted  by  persecution  and  ground  down 
by  oppression,  at  another,  allowed  every  privilege  and  placed 
on  a  footing  with  the  natives  of  the  soil,  there  has  been  a 
proved  impossibility  of  wearing  away  their  distinguishing 
characteristics,  and  confounding  them  with  any  other  tribe — 
is  not  this  marvellous  ?  That,  moreover,  throughout  their 
long  exile  from  their  own  land,  they  have  held  fast  the  Scrip- 
tures which  prove  their  hopes  vain,  and  appealed  to  pro- 
phets, who,  if  any  thing  better  than  deceivers,  accuse  them 
of  the  worst  crime,  and  convict  them  of  the  worst  madness — 
we  affirm  of  this,  that  it  is  a  prodigy  without  equal  in  all 
the  registered  wonders  which  have  been  known  on  our 
earth  :  and  I  want  nothing  more  to  assure  me  that  Christ 
came  from  God,  and  that  he  had  a  superhuman  power  of 
inspecting  distant  times,  than  the  evidence  vouchsafed,  when 
I  turn  from  surveying  the  once  chosen  people,  and  hear  the 
Redeemer  declaring,  in  his  last  discourse  in  the  temple,  that 
their  house  should  be  left  unto  them  desolate,  and  that  a 
moral  darkness  should  long  cloud  their  understanding. 

But  we  have  now,  in  the  third  and  last  place,  to  consider 
what  our  text  affirms  of  the  future  conversion  of  this  unbe- 
lieving people.  We  have  already  insisted  on  the  fact,  that,  in 
delivering  the  words  under  review,  Christ  was  concluding 


RESTORATION    OF    THE    JEWS.  561 

his  public  ministrations,  and  that  they  could  not,  thereforej 
have  been  accomplished  in  events  which  occurred  whilst 
he  was  yet  upon  earth.  Yet  they  manifestly  contain  a  pre- 
diction, that,  at  some  time  or  another,  the  Jews  would  be 
willing  to  hail  him  as  Messiah.  In  saying,  ':  ye  shall  not  see 
me  henceforth  till  ye  shall  say,  blessed  is  he  that  cometh  in 
the  name  of  the  Lord,"  Christ  undoubtedly  implied  that  the 
Jews  should  again  see  him,  but  not  till  prepared  to  give  him 
their  allegiance.  We  referred  you  to  the  psalm  in  which  this 
exclamation  occurs,  that  you  might  be  certified  as  to  its 
amounting  to  an  acknowledgment  of  the  Messiah.  So  that, 
on  every  account,  we  seem  warranted  in  assuming,  that, 
whilst  announcing  the  misery  which  the  Jews  were  fast 
bringing  on  themselves,  and  the  protracted  infidelity  to 
which  they  would  be  consigned,  Christ  also  announced  that 
a  time  would  come,  when  the  veil  would  betaken  from  their 
hearts,  and  they  would  delightedly  receive  the  very  being 
they  were  then  about  to  crucify. 

Such  is  the  great  event  for  which  we  yet  look,  and  with 
which  stands  associated  all  that  is  most  glorious  in  the 
dominion  of  Christianity.  We  know  not  with  what  eyes 
those  men  can  read  prophecy,  who  discover  not  in  its  an- 
nouncements the  final  restoration  and  conversion  of  the 
Jews.  It  is  useless  to  attempt  to  resolve  into  figurative  lan- 
guage, or  to  explain  by  a  purely  spiritual  interpretation,  pre- 
dictions which  seem  to  assert  the  reinstatement  of  the  exiles 
in  the  land  of  their  fathers,  and  their  becoming  the  chief 
preachers  of  the  religion  which  they  have  so  long  labored 
to  bring  into  contempt.  These  predictions  are  inseparably 
bound  up  with  others,  which  refer  to  their  dispersion  and 
unbelief;  so  that,  if  you  spiritualize  any  one,  you  must 
spiritualize  the  whole.  And  since  every  word  has  had  a 
literal  accomplishment,  so  far  as  the  dispersion  and  unbelief 
are  concerned,  how  can  we  doubt  that  every  word  will  have 
also  a  literal  accomplishment,  so  far  as  the  restoration  and 
conversion  are  concerned?  If  the  event  had  proved  the 
predicted  dispersion  to  be  figurative,  the  event,  in  all  pro- 
bability, would  prove  also  the  predicted  restoration  to  be 
71 


562  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

figurative.  But,  so  long  as  we  find  the  two  foretold  in  the 
same  sentence,  with  no  intimation  that  we  are  not  to  apply 
to  both  the  same  rule  of  interpretation,  we  seem  bound  to 
expect,  either  in  both  cases  a  literal  fulfillment,  or  in  both  a 
spiritual ;  and  since  in  the  one  instance  the  fulfillment  has 
been  undoubtedly  literal,  have  we  not  every  reason  for  con- 
cluding that  it  will  be  literal  in  the  other  ? 

We  believe  then  of  the  nation  of  Israel,  that  it  has  not 
been  cast  off  for  ever,  that  not  for  ever  shall  Jerusalem  sit 
desolate,  mourning  her  banished  ones,  and  trodden  down  by 
the  Gentiles.  We  believe,  according  to  the  declaration  of 
Isaiah,  that  there  shall  come  a  day  when  "  the  great  trumpet 
shall  be  blown,  and  they  shall  come  which  were  ready  to 
perish  in  the  land  of  Assyria,  and  the  outcasts  in  the  land  of 
Egypt,  and  shall  worship  the  Lord  in  the  holy  mount  at  Je- 
rusalem." We  believe,  according  to  the  magnificent  imagery 
of  the  same  evangelical  prophet,  that  a  voice  will  yet  say  to 
the  prostrate  nation  and  city,  "Arise,  shine,  for  thy  light  is 
come,  and  the  glory  of  the  Lord  is  risen  upon  thee."  "  The 
sons  of  strangers  shall  build  up  thy  walls,  and  their  kings 
shall  minister  unto  thee  ;  for  in  my  wrath  I  smote  thee ;  but 
in  my  favor  have  I  had  mercy  on  thee."  We  know  not  by 
what  mighty  impulse,  nor  at  what  mysterious  signal,  the 
scattered  tribes  shall  arise  from  the  mountains,  and  vallies, 
and  islands  of  the  earth,  and  hasten  towards  the  land  which 
God  promised  to  Abraham  and  his  seed.  We  cannot  divine 
what  instrumentality  will  be  brought  to  bear  on  mankind, 
when  God  shall  "  say  to  the  north,  give  up,  and  to  the  south 
keep  not  back  ;  bring  my  sons  from  far,  and  my  daughters 
from  the  ends  of  the  earth."  But  we  are  sure,  that,  what- 
ever the  means  employed  to  gather  home  the  wanderers, 
they  shall  flow  into  Judea  from  every  district  of  the  globe  ; 
they  shall  fly  as  "  the  doves  to  their  windows ;"  and  the 
waste  and  desolate  places  become  "  too  narrow  by  reason  of 
the  inhabitants." 

And  when  God's  hand  shall  have  been  lifted  up  to  the 
Gentiles,  compelling  them  to  bring  his  sons  in  their  arms, 
and  his  daughters  on  their  shoulders  ;  when  marching  thou- 


RESTORATION    OF    THE    JEWS. 


5G3 


sands  shall  have  crossed  the  confines  of  Palestine,  and 
pitched  their  tents  in  plains  which  the  Jordan  waters  ;  then 
will  there  be  a  manifestation  of  the  Christ,  and  then  a  con- 
version of  the  unbelieving.  We  have  but  few,  and  those 
obscure,  notices  of  this  august  consummation.  We  may 
perhaps  gather,  from  the  predictions  of  Ezekiel  and  Daniel, 
that,  when  the  Jews  shall  have  resettled  themselves  in  Ju- 
dea,  they  will  be  attacked  by  an  antichristian  confederacy  ; 
that  certain  potentates  will  combine,  lead  their  armies  to  the 
holy  land,  and  seek  to  plunder  and  exterminate  the  reinstated 
people.  And  the  struggle  will  be  vehement ;  for  it  is  de- 
clared in  the  last  chapter  of  the  Prophecies  of  Zechariah, 
"  I  will  gather  all  nations  against  Jerusalem  to  battle,  and 
the  city  shall  be  taken,  and  the  houses  rifled,  and  half  of  the 
city  shall  go  forth  into  captivity."  But  at  this  crisis,  when 
the  antichristian  powers  seem  on  the  point  of  triumphing 
over  the  Jews,  the  Lord,  we  are  told,  shall  visibly  interpose, 
and  turn  the  tide  of  battle.  "  And  his  feet  shall  stand  in 
that  day  upon  the  mount  of  Olives."  It  was  from  the 
mount  of  Olives  that  Jesus  ascended,  when  he  had  gloriously 
completed  our  redemption.  And  whilst  the  apostles  "  looked 
stedfastly  towards  heaven,  as  he  went  up,"  there  stood  by 
them  two  men  in  white  apparel,  which  told  them  that  "  this 
same  Jesus,  which  is  taken  up  from  you  into  heaven,  shall 
so  come  in  like  manner  as  ye  have  seen  him  go  into  hea- 
ven." There  was  here  a  clear  prophecy  that  Christ  should 
return  personally  to  the  earth,  and  that,  too,  in  like  manner 
as  he  departed.  And  it  may  be  one  point  of  similarity  be- 
tween the  departure  and  the  return,  that,  as  he  went  up 
from  the  mount  of  Olives,  so,  as  Zechariah  predicts,  it  shall 
be  on  the  mount  of  Olives  he  descends.  Then  shall  he  be 
seen  and  known  by  the  Jewish  people.  Then  shall  the 
hearts  of  this  people,  which  had  been  previously  moved,  it 
may  be,  to  the  seeking  the  God  of  their  fathers,  though  not 
to  the  acknowledging  the  crucified  Messiah,  sink  within 
them  at  the  view  of  the  being  whom  their  ancestors  pierced, 
and  whom  themselves  had  blasphemed.  They  shall  recog- 
nize in  him  their  long-expected  Christ,  and  throwing  away 


564  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

every  remnant  of  infidelity,  and  full  of  remorse  and  godly 
contrition,  shall  fall  down  before  him,  and  supplicate  forgive- 
ness, and  tender  their  allegiance. 

This  we  believe  to  be  the  time  referred  to  by  Christ  in  the 
prophecy  of  our  text.  Then  will  the  nation  be  prepared  to 
exclaim,  "  Blessed  is  he  that  cometh  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord."  Then  will  the  period,  which  God,  in  his  righteous 
vengeance,  hath  appointed  for  the  desolation  of  their  house, 
be  brought  to  its  close  ;  "  the  times  of  the  Gentiles"  will  be 
completed,  and  the  jubilee  year  of  this  creation  will  com- 
mence. Until  the  Jews,  with  one  heart  and  one  voice,  shall 
utter  the  welcome  of  our  text,  we  are  taught  to  expect  no 
general  diffusion  of  Christianity,  nothing  which  shall  ap- 
proach to  that  complete  mantling  of  the  globe  with  righ- 
teousness and  peace,  which  prophets  have  described  in  their 
most  fervid  strains.  But  the  uttering  this  welcome  by  the 
reinstated  Israelites,  shall  be  as  the  blast  of  the  silver  trum- 
pets which  ushered  in  the  jubilee  of  old.  The  sound  shall  be 
heard  on  every  shore.  The  east  and  the  west,  the  north  and 
the  south,  shall  echo  back  the  peal,  and  all  nations,  and  tribes, 
and  tongues  shall  join  in  proclaiming  blessed  "the  King  of 
kings  and  Lord  of  lords."  Jerusalem,  "  her  walls  salvation 
and  her  gates  praise,"  shall  be  erected  into  the  metropolis  of 
the  regenerated  earth ;  and  she  shall  send  forth,  in  every 
direction,  the  preachers  of  the  "  one  Mediator  between  God 
and  man  ;"  and  rapidly  shall  all  error,  and  all  false  doctrine, 
and  all  superstition,  and  all  opposition,  give  way  before  these 
mighty  missionaries  ;  till,  at  length,  the  sun,  in  his  circuit 
round  this  globe,  shall  shiue  upon  no  habitations  but  those 
of  disciples  of  Christ,  and  behold  no  spectacle  but  that  of  a 
rejoicing  multitude,  walking  in  the  love  of  the  Lord  our 
Redeemer. 

Such,  we  believe,  is  the  prophetic  delineation  of  what 
shall  occur  at  the  second  advent  of  Christ.  And  if  there 
were  great  cause  why  Jesus  should  weep  over  Jerusalem,  as 
he  thought  on  the  infidelity  of  her  children,  and  marked  the 
long  train  of  calamities  which  pressed  rapidly  onwards, 
there  is  abundant  reason  why  we,  upon  whom  are  fallen  the 


RESTORATION    OK    THE    JEW?.  565 

ends  of  the  world,  should  look  with  hope  to  the  hill  of  Zion, 
and  expect,  in  gladness  of  spirit,  the  speedy  dawning  of 
bright  days  on  the  deserted  and  desecrated  Jndea.  If  we 
have  at  heart  the  advance  of  Christianity,  we  shall  be  much 
in  prayer  for  the  conversion  of  the  Jews.  "  Ye  that  make 
mention  of  the  Lord,"  saith  the  prophet  Isaiah,  "keep  not 
silence,  arid  give  him  no  rest,  till  he  establish,  and  till  he 
make  Jerusalem  a  praise  in  the  earth."  I  have  more  than 
sympathy  with  the  Jews  as  a  people  chastened  for  the  sin  of 
their  ancestors :  I  have  an  indistinct  feeling  of  reverence 
and  awe,  as  knowing  them  reserved  for  the  most  glorious 
allotments.  It  is  not  their  sordidness,  their  degradation,  nor 
their  impiety — and  much  less  is  it  their  suffering — which 
can  make  me  forget  either  the  vast  debt  we  owe  them,  or  the 
splendid  station  which  they  have  yet  to  assume.  That  my 
Redeemer  was  a  Jew,  that  his  apostles  were  Jews,  that  Jews 
preserved  for  us  the  sacred  oracles,  that  Jews  first  published 
the  tidings  of  salvation,  that  the  diminishing  of  the  Jews 
was  the  riches  of  the  Gentiles — I  were  wanting  in  common 
gratitude,  if,  in  spite  of  all  this,  I  were  conscious  of  no 
yearnings  of  heart  towards  the  exiles  and  wanderers.  But, 
asks  St.  Paul,  "  if  the  casting  away  of  them  be  the  recon- 
ciling of  the  world,  what  shall  the  receiving  of  them  be  but 
life  from  the  dead  V  And  if  indeed  the  universal  reign  of 
Christ  cannot  be  introduced,  until  the  Jews  are  brought, 
like  Paul  their  great  type,  to  preach  the  faith  which  now 
they  despise,  where  can  be  our  sincerity  in  putting  up  con- 
tinually the  prayer,  "  thy  kingdom  come,"  if  we  have  no 
longing  for  the  home-gathering  of  the  scattered  tribes,  no 
earnestness  in  supplication  that  the  veil  may  be  taken  from 
the  heart  of  the  Israelite  ? 

In  proportion  as  we  "grow  in  grace  and  in  the  knowledge 
of  Christ,"  we  shall  grow  in  the  desire  that  the  Redeemers 
sovereignty  may  be  more  widely  and  visibly  extended.  And 
as  this  desire  increases,  our  thoughts  will  turn  to  Jerusalem, 
to  the  scenes  which  witnessed  Christ's  humiliation,  and 
which  have  also  to  witness  his  triumphs.  Dear  to  us  will  be 
every  mountain  and  every  valley ;  but  not  more  dear,  be- 


566  THE    DISPERSION    AND 

cause  once  hallowed  by  the  footsteps  of  the  Man  of  sorrows, 
than  because  yet  to  be  irradiated  by  the  magnificent  pre- 
sence of  the  King  of  kings.  Dear  will  be  Lebanon  with  its 
cedars,  and  Jordan  with  its  waters ;  but  not  more  dear,  be- 
cause associated  with  departed  glories,  than  because  the 
trees  have  to  rejoice,  and  ':  the  floods  to  clap  their  hands," 
before  the  Lord,  as  he  cometh  down  in  pomp  to  his  king- 
dom. Dear  will  be  the  city,  as  we  gaze  upon  it  in  its  scathed 
and  wasted  estate  ;  but  not  more  dear,  because  Jesus  sojourn- 
ed there,  and  suffered  there,  and  wept  there  bitter  tears,  than 
because  Jerusalem  hath  yet  to  be  "  a  crown  of  glory  in  the 
hand  of  the  Lord,  and  a  royal  diadem  in  the  hand  of  her 
God."  We  bid  you,  therefore,  examine  well,  whether  you 
assign  the  Jew  his  scriptural  place  in  the  economy  of  re- 
demption, and  whether  you  give  him  his  due  share  in  your 
intercessions  with  your  Maker.  You  owe  him  much  ;  yea, 
vastly  more  than  you  can  ever  compute.  The  branches 
were  broken  off;  and  we,  being  wild  olive  trees,  were  graft- 
ed in  amongst  them.  But  the  natural  branches  shall  be 
again  grafted  into  their  own  olive  tree.  And  when  they  are 
thus  grafted,  then — and  who  will  not  long,  who  will  not 
pray  for  such  result? — the  seed  which  was  less,  when  sown, 
than  all  the  seeds  in  the  earth,  shall  grow  suddenly  into  a 
plant  of  unrivalled  stature  and  efflorescence ;  the  whole 
globe  shall  be  canopied  by  the  far-spreading  boughs,  and  the 
fowls  of  the  air  shall  lodge  under  its  shadow. 

I  have  only  to  add,  that,  as  you  leave  the  church,  you  will 
be  asked  to  prove  that  you  do  indeed  care  for  the  Jews,  by 
subscribing  liberally  towards  a  Society  which  devotes  all  its 
energies  to  the  attempting  their  conversion.  I  have  indeed 
spoken  in  vain,  if  the  event  shall  prove  that  you  refuse  this 
Society  your  aid,  or  give  it  only  in  scant  measure.  And  it  is 
not  I  who  appeal  to  you.  The  memory  of  a  great  and  good 
man*  appeals  to  you.  The  Society  for  the  Conversion  of 
the  Jews  was  the  favorite  Society  of  that  admirable  and 
lamented  person,  who,  for  so  many  years,  labored  in  the 

*  The  Rev.  Charles  Simeon. 


RESTORATION    OF    THE    JEWS.  567 

ministry  in  this  town,  and  who  can  hardly  be  forgotten  here 
for  generations  to  come.  In  preaching  for  this  Society,  I 
redeem  a  promise  which  I  made  to  him  when  my  duties 
brought  me  last  year  to  this  place.  I  obey  his  wish,  I  com- 
ply with  his  request.  And  it  cannot  be  that  you  will  fail  to 
embrace  gladly  an  opportunity  of  showing  your  respect  for 
so  eminent  a  servant  of  God,  one  who  spent  and  was  spent, 
that  he  might  guide  you  to  heaven.  You  might  erect  to  him 
a  costly  monument;  you  might  grave  his  virtues  on  the 
brass,  and  cause  the  marble  to  assume  a  living  shape,  and 
bend  mournfully  over  his  ashes.'  But  be  ye  well  assured, 
that,  if  his  glorified  spirit  be  yet  conscious  of  what  passes  on 
this  earth,  it  would  be  no  pleasure  to  him  to  see  that  you 
gathered  into  solemn  processions  to  honor  his  obsequies,  and 
reared,  in  token  of  your  love,  the  stately  cenotaph,  compared 
with  what  he  would  derive  from  beholding  your  zeal,  in 
gathering  into  the  christian  fold  "  the  lost  sheep  of  the  house 
of  Israel." 


THE    END. 


1 


*  .■'■:^.;.;^^;>3^r. 


